organizationGlobal Public Health / Nonprofit HealthcareUnited States

Partners in Health

International nonprofit delivering healthcare to the world's poorest communities across 11 countries

Partners in Health (PIH) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public health organization founded in 1987 by Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, Jim Yong Kim, Thomas J. White, and Todd McCormack. It grew out of a community-based health project called Zanmi Lasante in Cange, Haiti, initially focused on treating people with HIV/AIDS in rural Haiti. PIH is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.

PIH's mission is to provide a preferential option for the poor in health care, framed as both medical and moral and grounded in solidarity rather than charity alone. It builds hospitals and medical facilities, hires and trains local staff, and delivers care ranging from in-home consultations to cancer treatments, while also addressing social determinants of health such as lack of clean water and food insecurity.

PIH currently operates programs in 11 countries — Haiti, Peru, Rwanda, Mexico, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Malawi, Lesotho, Russia, Kazakhstan, and the Navajo Nation — serving millions of patients through public facilities and community engagement. It partners with leading academic institutions to generate evidence that shapes global health policy and supports local governments in strengthening national health systems.

The organization works against stark global inequities: 50% of people worldwide lack access to essential health care, 92% of maternal deaths occur in low- and lower-middle-income countries, and 13,400 children die before age five every day. Innovations in global health delivery, community health systems, or health equity are directly relevant to PIH's core work.

Ideas that could help Partners in Health

Common-Factors Lay Counselor Training Kit
A structured, open-access curriculum and certification system that trains community health workers with no clinical degree to deliver Frank's core therapeutic principles—therapeutic alliance, hope instillation, shared healing narrative—in low-resource or disaster-affected settings.
Why it helps: PIH's community health worker model in Haiti, Rwanda, and elsewhere already delivers basic mental health support; a Frank-grounded curriculum would give their lay workers a principled, evidence-backed framework and reduce dependence on scarce psychiatrists.