Global Health Equity with Larry Summers and Paul Farmer: A Special Invitation

The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Foundation and Adams House, Harvard College are pleased to announce a ground-breaking event with two of the world’s most respected experts in the practical economics of global health.

ACHIEVING GLOBAL HEALTH EQUITY IN A GENERATION:
A ROAD MAP WITH LARRY SUMMERS AND PAUL FARMER
Tuesday October 14, 2014 3-5
Science Center B, Harvard Yard

In a report published last fall in The Lancet, Global Health 2035, Larry Summers and 23 renowned economists and health experts claim that if first-world nations make the right investments in the health sector today, the globe could achieve universally low rates of infectious, maternal and child deaths by 2035. In other words, we could shift directions to achieve a “grand convergence” in global health within just one generation.

This moderated 45-minute discussion will explore the practicalities of this plan, followed by questions from the audience.

Tickets: free for students; $15 for alumni and the interested public.

This is a special pre-invitation for friends of the Foundation before a general announcement to the University and National Press next week. Seating is limited and will surely sell out; buy your ticket now:

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Lawrence H. Summers is the Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus of Harvard University. During the past two decades, he has served in a series of senior policy positions in Washington, D.C., including the 71st Secretary of the Treasury for President Clinton, Director of the National Economic Council for President Obama and Vice President of Development Economics and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He received a bachelor of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and was awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1982. In 1983, he became one of the youngest individuals in recent history to be named as a tenured member of the Harvard University faculty. In 1987, Mr. Summers became the first social scientist ever to receive the annual Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation (NSF), and in 1993 he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, given every two years to the outstanding American economist under the age of 40. He is currently the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University and the Weil Director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

Medical anthropologist and physician Dr. Paul Farmer has dedicated his life to improving health care for the world’s poorest people. He chairs the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and is a founding director of Partners In Health (PIH), an international non-profit organization that since 1987 has provided direct health care services and undertaken research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty. He also is professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Farmer began his lifelong commitment to Haiti in 1983 while still a student, working with dispossessed farmers in Haiti’s Central Plateau. He served there for ten years as medical director of a charity hospital, L’Hôpital Bon Sauveur. Dr. Farmer holds an M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. In addition to his leadership roles at Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Partners In Health, he is the United Nations Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Community Based Medicine and Lessons from Haiti.