Rebecca Pfeifer-Rosenblum says Mountains Beyond Mountains inspired her to enter the health profession. (Karin Higgins/UC Davis photo)
Student inspired by this year’s Campus Community Book Project
“That book changed my life.” So said Rebecca Pfeifer-Rosenblum from behind the cash register at the coffee hut outside King Hall. She had seen a Dateline reporter holding the book as he ordered his morning cup of coffee.
That book is Mountains Beyond Mountains, this year’s Campus Community Book Project, now in its seventh year. The idea is to spark dialogue around a single book with a topic that inspires people to look at the world in different ways, to acknowledge and respect and consider different perspectives.
Mountains Beyond Mountains takes on global health care and poverty, through the story of Paul Farmer, a Boston physician who co-founded Partners in Health in Haiti, one of the world’s poorest countries.
To help promote the campus conversation, the Office of Campus Community Relations annually organizes a number of activities culminating in the author’s visit to campus.
Activities include lectures, book discussions, films and art exhibitions. The calendar also includes the World AIDS Day Rally, an annual event that happens to relate to this year’s book topic, and Human Corps’ Weekend in Service, which this year will focus on health and hunger.
Here is an essay that Pfeifer-Rosenblum wrote for Dateline:
‘Dr. Farmer’s ideology on poverty and equality is refreshing in its blatant defiance of our broken health care system. His devotion to his cause — equal access to health care for the world’s poor — is eye opening and inspiring.’
Rebecca Pfeifer-Rosenblum ‘08
The moment I finished Tracy Kidder’s book Mountains Beyond Mountains I decided I wanted to be a doctor. In talking to friends about the book, I realized that reading it had that effect on many people.
It is hard not to want to emulate Paul Farmer, the doctor who “would cure the world.” Dr. Farmer began his work at a hospital in Haiti and now manages an international health organization called Partners in Health.
Mountains Beyond Mountains describes Farmer’s work in science, his passion for service and his life philosophy. It is a book about philosophy and morality and even religion, and it made me examine the world and my place in it in a way I had never done before.
Dr. Farmer’s ideology on poverty and equality is refreshing in its blatant defiance of our broken health care system. His devotion to his cause — equal access to health care for the world’s poor — is eye opening and inspiring.
It is not surprising that the book converts so many to the health care profession, although I now understand that that is not its goal.
Instead, the book should compel us to do what we love and use that to help others in whatever way we can, starting with those who need it the most.
Paul Farmer operates not in the world as it is, but in the world as he thinks it should be, and in doing so, he is changing the world.
His story brought me hope that I, too, could make a difference.
The campus bookstore is selling the paperback at a discounted price of $9.95.