Paul Farmer, Founder of Partners in Health and the Power of Dynamic Pathways
Paul Farmer, trained as a physician and an anthropologist, started Partners in Health in Haiti in 1987 and has now expanded into eleven other countries, to combat what he called “stupid deaths.” In his own words, “I was tempted to record the cause of death as a weak health system for poor people” those uninsured and undeserving people who “fell through gaping hole in the safety net”—“too poor to survive catastrophic illness.”
Certainly the "restraining" societal and systemic forces of poverty -- the systemic forces that held sway -- and that held generations upon generations to live poverty, were no match for the meager forces of a small band of under-financed and ill-equipped doctors and nurses for a healthy citizenry. That's what we call the "driving" forces.
His solution was to train and support an existing and undervalued set of resources -- local and community health workers to “accompany patients through their treatment, delivering their treatment in their homes, addressing needs for food, housing, safe water, etc.
In other words, Paul Farmer put undervalued resources (health workers) through both a “time pathway,” that is, to follow patients through the course of a chronic illness and a “place pathway” -- peoples’ own homes.
Paul Farmer, trained as a physician and an anthropologist, started Partners in Health in Haiti in 1987 and has now expanded into eleven other countries, to combat what he called “stupid deaths.” In his own words, “I was tempted to record the cause of death as a weak health system for poor people” those uninsured and undeserving people who “fell through gaping hole in the safety net”—“too poor to survive catastrophic illness.”
Certainly the "restraining" societal and systemic forces of poverty -- the systemic forces that held sway -- and that held generations upon generations to live poverty, were no match for the meager forces of a small band of under-financed and ill-equipped doctors and nurses for a healthy citizenry. That's what we call the "driving" forces.
His solution was to train and support an existing and undervalued set of resources -- local and community health workers to “accompany patients through their treatment, delivering their treatment in their homes, addressing needs for food, housing, safe water, etc.
In other words, Paul Farmer put undervalued resources (health workers) through both a “time pathway,” that is, to follow patients through the course of a chronic illness and a “place pathway” -- peoples’ own homes.