Bending the Arc

As the poorest nations battled intractable diseases, a fledgling group of unstoppable health advocates took on a seemingly impossible mission: global health equity. In 1980s Haiti, in a remote region devastated first by tuberculosis and later by AIDS, Harvard medical student Paul Farmer, idealistic physician Jim Yong Kim, and activist Ophelia Dahl successfully raised funding and opened a clinic - but their patients weren't surviving after returning home from treatment. The team eventually realized that clinical treatment wasn't enough; they needed to radically change the way they interacted with the community. Through dramatically increased cultural sensitivity, pointed listening skills, local partnerships, and home visits, prognoses improved mightily, and the revolutionary Partners In Health was born. (Sundance Film Festival)