Structural Violence & Poverty
It refers to social arrangements that put individuals and populations in harm's way.
What is structural violence? It refers to social arrangements that put individuals and populations in harm's way.
What is structural violence?
This principle means walking with the patient throughout their care journey.
What is accompaniment?
Malnutrition is not just the absence of food—
it is the presence of forgotten wars,
of mothers bound by tradition and poverty,
of clinics built too far from cries.
It is colonialism that still lingers in soil,
and policies that feed everyone but the child.
Farmer saw access to this as a non-negotiable human right.
What is healthcare?
This science helps adapt evidence-based care into real-world low-resource settings.
What is implementation science?
Paul Farmer co-founded this organization in Haiti to deliver care to the poor.
What is Partners In Health?
Paul Farmer calls this the “silent killer” that rarely makes headlines but causes death and suffering daily.
What is poverty?
Farmer insisted global health delivery must prioritize this ethical commitment to the poor.
What is the preferential option for the poor?
In a rural land where silence reigns,
She traced the bruise behind the chains.
Not just the wound, but how it's made—
Through systems broken, justice delayed.
She named the way that histories last,
How laws and power shape the past.
How culture, shame, and gendered fear
Decide whose pain the world will hear.
From one-stop doors to village halls,
She watched where safety often stalls.
Yet through the cracks, she mapped a way—
For healing shaped by what they say.
Her frame was bold: not just disease,
But how it's lived in times like these.
With care that’s whole, and justice wide—
A lens where truth and health collide.
Who authored this biosocial vision of gendered harm and multisectoral hope?
Vera
Mukherjee distinguishes this from equality by emphasizing resource distribution based on need.
What is equity?
Mukherjee says strengthening this is the key to achieving universal health coverage.
What is the health system?
This disease outbreak in Haiti revealed international neglect and poor coordination.
What is cholera?
Paul Farmer critiques this economic system for commodifying health and neglecting the poor.
What is neoliberalism?
Joia Mukherjee believes this kind of care model links clinical work with justice.
What is social medicine?
Where war leaves scars not just on land,
But etched in womb and outstretched hand.
She traced not just the cries of pain,
But how power flows through blood and brain.
A clinic shut, a mother bleeds,
A girl retreats, denied her needs.
But zoom in close—and what you'll see:
It’s more than bodies. It’s history.
She writes of mothers giving birth
On floors of dust, denied their worth.
Where health is crushed by power games,
And silence fuels reproductive flames.
She journeys past the sterile chart,
Into the beating, breaking heart.
Where justice isn’t just a word—
But where survival must be heard.
Who offered this biosocial lens on gender, war, and survival?
Ahmed
Farmer argued that relying on this economic metric alone ignores the human right to care.
What is cost-effectiveness?
This strategy reallocates care duties to trained lay workers to fill workforce gaps.
What is task-shifting?
Farmer’s early fieldwork in this region shaped his lifelong commitment to equity in care.
What is Cange or central Haiti?
Farmer argues that this theological framework provides a moral imperative to fight injustice in health.
What is liberation theology?
These workers extend health systems into communities, building trust and improving outcomes.
Who are community health workers?
In lands where healing walks on foot,
And wages shrink while donors root,
He traced the pulse of those unseen—
The ones who care, yet serve between.
Not civil staff, not fully paid,
Their labor called, but not repaid.
Through muddy paths and empty shelves,
They bring the clinic to the delves.
He named the force of gendered toil,
Of promises made in foreign soil.
And showed how health, when cut by class,
Still leans on those who often pass.
He called for wages, worth, and trust—
For work that's sacred, fair, and just.
A biosocial plea, sharply drawn:
That systems break when care is pawned.
Who illuminated the political economy of unpaid care, forgotten health workers, and fractured funding streams?
Tamba
Mukherjee says this allows practitioners to envision justice-centered care systems.
What is moral imagination?
This phrase, used by both authors, captures the complexity of embedding care in real-world social contexts.
What is health systems strengthening?
Treating this drug-resistant disease in Haiti defied expert consensus on feasibility.
What is multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB)?
This is the term Farmer uses to describe the institutional indifference to suffering rooted in historical exploitation.
What is historical amnesia or structural indifference?
Farmer and Mukherjee believe these long-term partnerships, not short-term projects, create lasting change.
What are sustained, community-based health systems?
Where medicine meets broken trust,
And pills are faith, because they must—
He wrote of charts no lab could test,
Of doctors guessing, doing their best.
Where power hides in global guides,
And rural need the law defies,
He showed how scarcity and norms
Distort the rules, remake the forms.
In hospitals with darkened halls,
No microscopes, no sterile walls—
He watched the bullet-broad drugs fly,
A gamble made so none might die.
His pen uncovered every thread:
Of knowledge held, and things unsaid.
A lens that sees both bugs and blame—
In every script, a power game.
Whose biosocial lens dissected antibiotics, authority, and survival in silence?
Stephen
For both Joia and Paul, this framework connects medicine with political and civil rights.
What is a rights-based approach to health?
Joia Mukherjee often emphasizes not just metrics but this as a measure of successful care.
What is dignity or solidarity?
Farmer used this phrase to describe Haiti’s suffering being politicized and pathologized.
What is “the suffering subject” or “the pathology of power”?