Ophelia Dahl

Ophelia Magdalena Dahl (born 12 May 1964) is a British-American social justice and health care advocate. Dahl co-founded Partners In Health (PIH), a Boston, Massachusetts-based non-profit health care organization dedicated to providing a "preferential option for the poor." She served as executive director for 16 years and has since chaired its board of directors. As a co-founder and key member of the PIH team, Dahl was featured prominently in Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, Tracy Kidder's book describing the work of the organisation and the life of Dr. Farmer. In December 2006, Ophelia Dahl and Paul Farmer received the Union Medal from Union Theological Seminary in New York. Dahl and the Partners in Health team is featured in the 2017 documentary film, Bending The Arc. Career In 1983, Dahl first encountered Paul Farmer, the future co-founder of PIH, as an eighteen-year-old volunteer in Haiti. Dahl has served as Executive Director of PIH from 2001 to 2005, and now chairs the Board of Directors, where the organisation continues to build health care systems and raise standards in global health in remote areas of the world. Since the development of PIH in 1987, the organisation has expanded its health care services around the planet. Under the leadership of Dahl, PIH is strengthening the public health system for over 800,000 people in Rwanda. Other countries include Malawi, Mexico, Russia, and Lesotho, where PIH works with the countries' respective ministries of health to fight diseases in certain rural areas. PIH provides critical health care services through programs for cancer, chronic diseases, cholera, HIV/AIDS, surgery, women's health, child health, community health workers, mental health, and tuberculosis. As of now, PIH works in more than 60 hospital centers around the world, with more than 12,000 colleagues involved.