Ophelia Dahl, who was included on Time magazine’s annual list of the world’s 100 most-influential people for 2024, is the speaker at Friday night’s “Stories to Share” at 5 p.m. at Jaffrey Civic Center. 

Dahl’s talk, titled “Public Health in Practice: Conversations About Accompaniment,” will take the form of an informal conversation with moderator Joseph Steinfield.

“Maybe it’s because of too many years on Zoom, but I wanted to have more of a conversation than a lecture,” Dahl said. “We’ll cover a range of subjects, and I’m hoping we’ll have time for questions.”

Dahl, a resident of Cambridge and Jaffrey, founded global health nonprofit Partners in Health with Dr. Paul Farmer in  1987. Dahl’s interest in global public health, specifically in providing health care for the very poor, began when she volunteered in Haiti as a high school student 40 years ago and saw the glaring inequities in the quality or lack of health care for impoverished people. 

“We’ll be talking about Partners in Health’s work, both and past and present, and about the importance of accompaniment as shown through community health workers,” Dahl said.

“Accompaniment,” the idea that people need to be accompanied and assisted through their health care journeys, is a basic tenet of PIH. 

“We work with the most-destitute people living in the margins of society,” Dahl said. “There are just so many barriers to care. What if people have no transportation? What if they can’t leave their children? We try to eliminate those barriers.”

Dahl’s role at PIH has evolved from founder and on-the-ground volunteer to 16 years as executive director and her current role as chair of the board. 

“We started in a two-room apartment in Cambridge 30 years ago, and the organization has just grown exponentially,” Dahl said. “My real expertise is probably in how we grew the organization  over the years. We started out in Haiti, and now we’re in 11 countries across the globe — five of them in Africa. We started in Sierra Leone and Liberia during Ebola.  Now we’re also in the U.S., in the Navajo Nation.” 

Dahl makes the distinction that PIH is “not a disaster relief organization.”

“We don’t just come in for a short while and leave, although sometimes we have to do that when there is a disaster.  We focus on working with local and national governments to build and rebuild health systems, often out in rural areas,” she said.

Dahl says PIH has remained in Haiti despite political upheaval and natural disasters that have devastated the country in recent years. 

“An enormous proportion of our employees are nationals of the country they serve. For us to leave would be a tremendous loss and dislocation for people. We have been through many coups and many very difficult things,” Dahl said. “There are difficulties everywhere we work, but there are also extraordinary civil servants who want to help people.”

Dahl says people often ask her how how she stays positive working with people in such desperate situations. She cites Rwanda as an example of a nation that has been able to heal from devastating tragedy. 

“Rwanda is such a incredible success story. In 1994, they had the genocide, and it’s hard to imagine that it would ever be possible to overcome that catastrophe. But Rwanda has been rebuilt, despite neighbors killing neighbors and everything that happened. It is an extraordinary place of hope,” Dahl said. “I though of Rwanda after the Haiti earthquake” 

Dahl stays optimistic despite the state of the world. 

“I take the long view with humanity. Seeing the long view, seeing the small victories, seeing progress, getting to know people who become great friends.  Often, things that can be torn apart by humans can be rebuilt by humans,” Dahl said. “PIH is working in some of the most-challenged places in the world, but we see positive things.  There is good news coming from these places. We see hope.”

For information about Partners in Health, go to pih.org.