I just came across one of my former students -Joel- giving a talk at the forthcoming the Paul Farmer Partners In Health (PIH) symposium. PIH are to me one of the most inspiring organisations in the world, cofounded by Paul Farmer a medic and medical anthropologist.
I originally tried to include them somehow in my postdoc proposal, specifically because climate change related mosquito associated disease is taking off in Peru where PIH are trying to address this. It got too complex to formally do so at the time, but inevitably I will bump into them along the way. Instead I am hoping to collaborate with this group in the coming future.
I am bringing up PIH because earlier this week at the in-person launch of RESET (Resilient and Just Systems research group at Helsinki University) one of the lead people, Tarja, explicitly invited “bold ideas”. Then last night after musing on this I had a waking dream that left me with the question of what would a Veterinary and Anthropology One Health version of PIH look like?
If PIH is the critical counterpart to the WHO then what is the critical counterpart to WOAH (OIE) that looks at disease as more-than-human?
What a great question! Let’s try and find out.
Great! Lets do this