Kim's research has appeared in American and international academic publications, including Science, the New England Journal of Medicine, the World Journal of Surgery, the European Journal of Public Health and International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. His resume features years of interdisciplinary research that address the problems associated with providing health care in the developing world and the implications of global health policies.
"A lot of people assume once you get to [the] molecular level and make new drugs, you're done," Kim said in a previous interview with The Dartmouth. "In fact, the complex problem in health care is woefully understudied."
Kim's work often addresses medical problems from a social and anthropological standpoint. Mario Raviglione, director of the World Health Organization's "Stop TB" Department, has worked closely with Kim on tuberculosis research since 1998 and has collaborated with him on several articles. In "Increasing Transparency in Partnerships for Health," published in 2002, they outlined the WHO's Green Light Committee Initiative, a project designed to help developing countries acquire high-quality drugs to combat multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis.
Kim aims for his research to result in concrete changes, like the Green Light Committee Initiative, Raviglione said.
"I would call it an operational research type of perspective," he said. "There weren't any clinical trials. It was much more towards health policy, towards changing what needed to be changed."
Media reaction to the Green Light Committee Initiative has been overwhelmingly positive, Raviglione said.
Kim's research has been profiled in major news outlets, including The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report and Time Magazine. Vanity Fair also published a joint profile of Kim and Madonna in June 2007, which detailed their separate work in poverty-stricken Malawi.
Other academics in Kim's field respect his work immensely, Richard Chaisson, director of the Center for Tuberculosis Research at Johns Hopkins University, said.
"He's been a very influential person in terms of policy," Chaisson said. "He's really made the case that we have to treat these infections, no matter how."
Mercedes Becerra, a professor at Harvard Medical School's department of global health and social medicine, said she first worked with Kim as a graduate student in 1994. Kim is currently the chair of the department.
They worked together in Peru to examine the spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis in small Peruvian communities, she said.
"It wasn't getting the attention that it really needed from the local health authorities," she said. "As a researcher, [Kim's] approach was to understand what was going on from the political and policy side, as well as the clinical side."
Kim recently co-edited "Dying for Growth: Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor," a collection of case studies focusing on the economic policies of seven developing nations. Reviewer Carlos Molina of the City University of New York called the text "a must for any student interested in international health."
In "Anthropology, Accountability, and the Prevention of AIDS," which Kim co-wrote with fellow Partners in Health co-founder Paul Farmer in 1991, Kim examined the widespread belief at the time that AIDS originated in Haiti. This belief -- which stemmed from the high number of AIDS cases in the Haitian heterosexual community -- contributed to the Center for Disease Control's decision to list all Haitians as a risk group, a move Kim and Farmer called "strong and lasting discrimination."
"The World Health Organization calls this kind of misinformation the other AIDS epidemic," they wrote in the paper's abstract. "A great deal of the information that people have at their disposal is either false or inaccurate."
In the paper, Kim and Farmer stressed the importance of available, accurate information, in conjunction with proper methods of physical protection, in curbing the spread of HIV.
Those who have worked with Kim say he is a natural leader.
Raviglione called Kim "a pusher," characterizing his leadership style as "visionary and optimistic."
"His approach and spirit are not common, I must say," Raviglione said. "When you give him a project that seems impossible, that's when he really performs at his best."
Staff writers Turia Lahlou and Mitch Davis contributed to the reporting of this article.
