It’s how do you build a community, to keep those convictions alive? People are drawn to not only the higher education but the idea of fairness, justice, equity. They are working on a deal right now, that it will become apparent when it’s available, and as soon as it does, and is available for easy watching, then that will be on our website as well.PAUL FARMER: I would just add, about that film: Obviously, we’re not filmmakers. Thank you, Frank.FRANK BLAKE: Let me start by asking you to take our listeners on your journey as founders of Partners In Health. McCormack continues to spearhead IMG special projects and supports the company’s digital media business and also works independently with digital media businesses as an angel investor and advisor.
It’s thinking about what is the meaning of life on this beautiful, but uneven planet of ours? I can remember the name of someone that I haven’t spoken to, or heard from, which is unusual because we’re in touch, but he was already an older man.
It’s pretty infectious to feel as though you, and so I think if you only face barrier after barrier, it’s probably a little bit more difficult to stay in the game, but that’s another reason to do it with people you trust, and love, and like working with, because as you get tired, or you get dispirited, then people lift you up, so I think there are all kinds of ingredients that go into this.FRANK BLAKE: There’s a great quote, and I think I’ve got this right from you, Ophelia. That you can’t apply a different set of standards, and that’s where the complexity stuff comes in, in terms of people who say “stick to your knitting,” or don’t get out of your lane, or mission creep, or any of those kinds of things, and, actually, that was when the work became even more enriching.
There was, there still is a river there, and at certain times of the year the river would become swirling, and fierce, so fierce that you couldn’t cross it, and so there were people trapped on the other side, and there were women, really, literally, dying in childbirth, and we work with American doctors. I do think it’s one of the answers to it.PAUL FARMER: Inside an institution like that, or institutions like that, universities, medical schools, nursing schools, there are also serious equity issues, so I know that in this first medical school class.
This is so hard. We need to get a bridge, and I remember a colleague saying to me you’ll never get that bridge built, and it actually took six years, but it wasn’t because we were able to buy a bridge. It was a squatter settlement, that was established, really, because the valley was flooded, but when we went there it was a long time after that event, but people carried these memories of having known something better.
We’re thinking about systems and that kind of thing, but I would also say it’s going, so you see the progress. If I am ever feeling down about almost anything, and I visit my colleagues and friends, and the work at any one of the sites.
Ophelia Dahl In 1983, she volunteered at the small Eye Care Haiti clinic in Haiti’s impoverished Central Plateau.
It really is an antidote for despair, no question.FRANK BLAKE: That’s fantastic. So I truly was just listening, and watching, and thinking about how things could be different.
To be connected to those people, and to do work together.PAUL FARMER: That’s pretty much it for me as well. I think, again, if someone was to send an email to info@pih.org, someone will respond to that, about the way to do that.FRANK BLAKE: Terrific!
Their story dates back to a time when Ophelia was a teenager and Paul was in his early twenties. At least that’s been, I think, very helpful to us.OPHELIA DAHL: I would say that there’s no question that going, seeing progress, and at this point, there’s such a focus, Frank, these days, on the relatively quick solution.
Now, we have been working over the last few years to build the University of Global Health Equity in northern Rwanda, as a first step in the north. New to podcasts? It’s really that we will be here for as long as you want us to be here. Friends, people we care about doing the same work, encouraging each other.
We’re lucky that we have colleagues, in this case, in Haiti, and elsewhere, who would not say that’s a ridiculous idea. The idea that you go somewhere as an 18-year-old, and you go there to see and learn, and you feel lucky to make friends, but then when there’s a suggestion that you can do something to affect some change, even in a small way, you have to have been socialized to feel as though you can do something like that, which is obviously something we’ve all been socialized for. PAUL FARMER: Well, this is a particular place, Frank. In closing, I have two very general questions. Not because we think about leaving, but as Paul once said to me, or answered a question of someone who said how do you stay in this? It’s good to be here.PAUL FARMER: Terrific to be here.
She is the executive director of the large social justice organization Partners in Health. There’s a romanticization of an answer that will be fast, for, actually, to reverse systems that have sometimes taken centuries to undo, and I think that the eye on the longterm is very important.