Decades before they joined the fight against COVID-19, and long before they helped battle Ebola in West Africa, Dr. Paul Farmer, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, and Ophelia Dahl—all barely out of their teens at the time—began a movement that would change global health forever by co-founding Partners In Health. Bending the Arc tells their story.
Not long ago, the global health establishment declared it was impossible to treat impoverished people suffering from certain deadly diseases, and that delivering quality care in marginalized communities was “unsustainable.” In the 1980s, these social justice and global health advocates set out to prove them wrong. PIH’s revolutionary model of training community members as health workers and treating all people, with dignity and world-class medicine, has forever changed public health.
Bending the Arc is the story of Partners In Health’s origins and how founders influenced international movements at the center of some of the world’s most pressing humanitarian crises.