Nobel Prize winner Joseph Edward Murray, ScD, M.D. will also receive an honorary degree at 2006 Thomas Jefferson University commencement

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DATE: Friday, June 2, 2006

TIME: 10:30 a.m. to Noon

LOCATION:
Verizon Hall
Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts
Broad and Spruce Streets
Philadelphia

PRESIDING:
Robert L. Barchi, M.D., Ph.D
President, Thomas Jefferson University, will deliver the convocation and confer all degrees.

HONOREES:
Paul E. Farmer, M.D, Ph.D, executive vice president of Partners in Health, will receive an honorary doctor of science degree at the annual commencement exercises for Jefferson Medical College and Jefferson College of Graduate Studies.

Joseph Edward Murray, ScD, M.D.
Professor of Surgery, Emeritus
Harvard Medical School
1990 Recipient of Nobel Prize in Medicine for discoveries concerning organ and cell transplantation

EVENT:
Doctor of medicine degrees will be presented to 213 Jefferson Medical College students at the ceremony. In addition, 19 doctor of philosophy degrees and 57 master of science degrees will be conferred on students from the Jefferson College of Graduate Studies.

BACKGROUND:
Dr. Farmer, a medical anthropologist, is a founding director of Partners In Health, an international charity organization that provides direct health care services and undertakes research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty.

He is known worldwide for his pioneering work in global health, focusing on diseases that disproportionately afflict the poor.

Dr. Farmer splits his time between Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, where he serves as chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities, and a small hospital built by Partners In Health in the tiny village of Cange, Haiti.

Since beginning his medical career in the 1980s, Dr. Farmer has devoted his life to improving the health and lives of the world's neediest people. In a kind of Robin Hood fashion, Dr. Farmer has also begged and borrowed AIDS drugs from virtually any source he could find to provide medication to those who cannot afford them. He goes to the same lengths to secure medical supplies. He has been profiled in the PBS-TV documentary series, “Rx for Survival.”

Founded in 1824, Jefferson Medical College has awarded more than 27,000 medical degrees and has among the most living graduates of medical schools in the nation. It offers both traditional medical education programs and innovative joint degree programs to its enrollment of approximately 900 students each year.