College President Jim Yong Kim used to joke that he and Harvard Medical School professor Paul Farmer were "twin sons of different mothers," Tracy Kidder wrote in his 2004 book "Mountains Beyond Mountains." This friendship which has prompted some students to ask whether Farmer will join the Dartmouth faculty may now lead to a partnership between Dartmouth and Partners in Health, the non-profit organization Farmer and Kim co-founded.
Partners in Health executive director Ophelia Dahl brought up the possibility of such a collaboration during last Wednesday's "first lecture" to the incoming Class of 2013, which featured Dahl, Kim and Farmer.
Kim and Farmer first met in 1983 during a snowstorm in Cambridge, Mass., when they were both students at Harvard Medical School. Kim, speaking at the "first lecture," said he later met Dahl when he volunteered to deliver a recommendation letter that Farmer had written for Dahl to Wellesley College after Farmer broke his leg in a car accident. Kim laughed as he said that it was this last-minute drive that led to Dahl's acceptance to Wellesley.
Farmer said at the panel that Kim's son Thomas complains about how often they tell the story of how they met, but Farmer emphasized that it is an example of how the people students meet in college can shape the rest of their lives.
Their bond extends far beyond their health-care work Kim served as Farmer's best man at his wedding and Farmer is the godfather of Kim's son Thomas.
Kim, Dahl and Farmer's banter throughout the panel highlighted their friendship, with Kim calling Farmer and Dahl by the affectionate nicknames, "Pel" and "Min."
"Let me just call them by what I really call them," Kim said, referring to Farmer and Dahl. "I can't call them by their real names."
The close friendship between Kim, Dahl and Farmer is described in Kidder's book, which was assigned as summer reading for the Class of 2013. The book also describes Kim's position as Farmer's right-hand man during the early years of PIH and the long hours the two spent together working to expand the organization.
When asked at the panel about why they became such good friends, Farmer said, "One of the answers is that we were prepared to become friends."
"To me, the inner circle of PIH seemed like a club, or even like a family," Kidder wrote.
During the panel, the three said that their friendship was one of the elements that has helped PIH, which provides medical care to low-income communities around the world, become successful.
"Knowing at a young age that we connected immediately was enormously important," Dahl said.
Farmer, who has known Kim for 26 years, is the executive vice president of PIH. Farmer took over Kim's role as chairman of Harvard Medical School's Department of Global Health and Social Medicine after Kim stepped down from the position this May.
Dahl said Kim's role at Dartmouth creates the potential for a partnership between Dartmouth and PIH.
"Partners in Health is an organization that has affiliations with different schools; at some point hopefully we'll have one with this one," Dahl said.
PIH director of communications Andrew Marx, in an interview with The Dartmouth, said PIH staff members have been discussing a collaboration with Dartmouth since Kim came to the College.
"There's certainly a potential for a partnership," Marx said.
PIH currently has partnerships with Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. The Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change at the medical school, launched in 1997, serves undergraduate and graduate students and facilitates research on the treatment and prevention of infectious diseases.
