[Chat] Patch Adams, Hopkins 7:30 Wednesday

[Kathleen Wilsbach]

http://www.jhu.edu/mse/events/adams.html

Patch Adams, Hopkins 7:30 Wednesday
Shriver Auditorium

Often controversial, always vocal, never boring, Dr. Patch Adams is a 
physician, an advocate of free healthcare, a social revolutionary, 
and more often than not, a clown.

In 1972, Dr. Adams founded Gesundheit!, an organization dedicated to 
addressing the "spiraling costs, dispirited care givers and alienated 
patients" in the American healthcare system. Gesundheit! started as a 
home-based free clinic, moved to offer overnight stays, and 
eventually attempted to integrate the lives of those giving care and 
those receiving it. According to Dr. Adams' website , "Friendship and 
fun were vital ingredients towards joyfully sustaining their service. 
As the demand for care grew, the need for a full facility became 
apparent."

In 1980, Gesundheit! purchased 317 acres of wooded mountainous land 
in West Virginia as the site for an envisioned free-healthcare rural 
hospital. Around the same time, Dr. Adams became Gesundheit!'s 
full-time fundraiser, publically promoting the idea of building an 
entire hospital based on sustaining "joyful service."

To date, several workshops and living quarters have been built on the 
land in West Virginia, although hospital construction has not yet 
begun. In the mean time, Dr. Adams' founding of Gesundheit! and his 
revolutionary attitude towards free healthcare were made into the hit 
movie Patch Adams , starring Robin Williams. Dr. Adams has 
co-authored two books: Gesundheit! and House Calls: How We Can All 
Heal the World One Visit at a Time

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