Dr. Jim Yong Kim: U.S. Nominee for World Bank President
Profile
Jim Yong Kim is the 17th president of Dartmouth College, an institution renowned for innovative research and excellence in undergraduate teaching. He is a physician, anthropologist, and global health expert who has dedicated himself to finding new ways of providing medical treatment to underserved populations worldwide.
Prior to arriving at Dartmouth, Dr. Kim served as Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, while holding professorships at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. In 1987, while still a student, Dr. Kim co-founded Partners In Health, which has introduced primary health care platforms in a dozen countries, from Haiti and elsewhere in Latin America, to rural reaches of Africa; he has spent a great deal time in Rwanda and Lesotho, where he and colleagues from Partners In Health worked with public-health authorities to introduce care for chronic infectious diseases including AIDS and tuberculosis. In Peru, he pioneered the treatment of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis and led a coalition, funded by the Gates Foundation, to scale-up such efforts countrywide and, later, to Russia and Kazakhstan. As Director of the World Health Organization’s Department of HIV/AIDS, Dr. Kim set the first ever goal for global AIDS treatment when he initiated, in 2003, the “3 by 5” initiative, which sought to treat 3 million patients living with HIV with antiretroviral drugs by 2005. The effort is broadly regarded as the most successful modern global health initiative; an estimated 7 million people have since benefited from this and related efforts.
Dr. Kim’s scholarly work has long focused on the impact of economic policies on the health and well-being of families living in poverty. He is author or editor of dozens of papers and books on this subject, and has designed a number of courses and training programs for health professionals and managers of health systems. At Harvard Medical School, he and his colleagues designed the Global Health Delivery project, which sought to learn lessons from health care and development efforts across the globe. At Dartmouth, he continued this work, founding the Center for Health Care Delivery Science, which established an international network of researchers and practitioners to design, implement, and scale new models of high-quality low-cost care.
His work in the field of global health has earned him widespread recognition, including a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, election to the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine, and selections as one of America’s “25 Best Leaders” by US News and World Report and one of TIME Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World,” among numerous other awards. In 2010, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine recognized Dr. Kim for “seeking solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges.” He has also published extensively over the past two decades, authoring and co-authoring articles for leading academic and scientific journals and contributing to many books on public health issues.
Born in Seoul, Korea, Dr. Kim moved to the United States at the age of five and grew up in Iowa. He graduated magna cum laude from Brown University, earned a medical degree from Harvard Medical School and a doctorate in anthropology from Harvard University. He is married to pediatrician Younsook Lim, with whom he has two sons, and remains on the board of Partners In Health, which he led for many years.
My Call for an Open, Inclusive World Bank
by Jim Yong Kim
We live in a time of historic opportunity. Today more people live in fast-growing economies than at any time in history, and development can take root anywhere – regardless of whether a country is landlocked, just emerging from conflict or oppression, large or small. If we build on this, we can imagine a world in which billions of people in developing countries enjoy increases in their incomes and living standards. Given our collective experiences, successes and resources, it’s clear that we can eradicate global poverty and achieve in our lifetimes what for generations has been a distant dream.
My own life and work have led me to believe that inclusive development – investing in human beings – is an economic and moral imperative. I was born in South Korea when it was still recovering from war, with unpaved roads and low levels of literacy. I have seen how integration with the global economy can transform a poor country into one of the most dynamic and prosperous economies in the world. I have seen how investment in infrastructure, schools and health clinics can change lives. And I recognise that economic growth is vital to generate resources for investment in health, education and public goods.
Every country must follow its own path to growth, but our collective mission must be to ensure that a new generation of low and middle-income countries enjoys sustainable economic growth that generates opportunities for all citizens.
As co-founder of Partners in Health and director of the World Health Organisation’s initiative to treat HIV/Aids, I will bring practical experience to the World Bank. I have confronted the forces that keep more than 1bn people trapped in poverty. I have worked in villages where fewer than 1 in 10 adults could read or write, where preventable diseases cut lives short and where lack of infrastructure and capital held back entrepreneurs. In all those villages, the local people knew where improvement was needed.
But for change to happen, we need partnerships between governments, the private sector and civil society to build systems that can deliver sustainable, scalable solutions. And as we work for global prosperity, we must draw on ideas and experience from around the globe.
My message is simple: an era of extraordinary opportunity requires an extraordinary global institution. I want to hear from developing countries, as well as those that provide a big share of the resources to development, about how we can together build a more inclusive, responsive and open World Bank.
A more inclusive World Bank will have the resources to advance its core mission of poverty reduction. It will have a governance structure that provides legitimacy and fosters trust and confidence. The Bank has recently achieved a historic capital increase and begun an ambitious programme to modernise its operations. It has also taken important steps to increase the voting power and participation of developing countries. If I am entrusted with the responsibility of leading the World Bank, I shall ensure this continues. If the World Bank is to promote inclusive development, it must give developing nations a greater voice.
A more responsive World Bank must meet the challenges of the moment but also foresee those of the future. The World Bank serves all countries. My focus will be to ensure that it provides a rapid, effective response to their needs. I will come with an open mind and apply my medical and social-science training to take an evidence-based approach.
Finally, a more open World Bank must recognise it does not have all the answers and listen closely to its clients and stakeholders. I have led a world-renowned higher education institution and I will ensure that the World Bank provides a platform for the exchange of ideas. It is already working more closely with a diverse array of partners and it can build on these changes. The Bank has taken significant steps to become more transparent and accountable: it must continue on this path of openness.
Opportunity is nothing without action. In the coming weeks, I look forward to hearing the views of the World Bank’s constituents – clients, donors, governments, citizens and civil society – as we forge a common vision to build an even stronger institution, prepared to meet the world’s needs in the 21st century.
Originally published in Financial Times, March 28, 2012.
