Jim Kim returns to DSMHI and PIH

Jim Kim is back. Jim, who teamed up with Paul Farmer to found Partners In Health in 1987, returned in mid-December after almost three years at the World Health Organization (WHO), where he served first as Senior Advisor to the Director-General on HIV/AIDS and then as head of the HIV/AIDS Department.

On his return from Geneva, Jim resumed responsibilities as chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities (DSMHI) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a position he had held before taking leave to work at WHO. A first for a major US teaching hospital, DSMHI is one of the "three pillars" of institutional support that makes it possible for PIH to translate our experience serving the destitute sick into clinical and operational research, education and training programs, and policies for reducing disparities in health care.

Since helping found PIH, Jim has served as its executive director and as a member of its board of directors. He played a leading role when PIH challenged the prevailing medical wisdom to prove that multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis can and must be treated as well in a shantytown on the outskirts of Lima as in a teaching hospital in the United States or Western Europe.

During his tenure at the WHO, Jim spearheaded the groundbreaking "3 by 5" campaign to get 3 million AIDS patients in developing countries on anti-retroviral medication by the end of 2005. Now he will bring the knowledge and experience developed at PIH and amplified at the WHO to bear on DSMHI's mission of addressing health disparities through training, education, research and service.

Jim Yong Kim with children in Uganda during his tenure at the
World Health Organization.