Patch Adams

Known best for the biopic starring Robin Williams, healthcare and motivational speaker Patch Adams is a physician, clown, and pioneering social activist. His life’s mission is serious business, but when he appears as a speaker, Patch Adams draws on his experience as a street clown. His keynote addresses blend humor and insight in exuberant calls to positive action.

While studying for his medical degree in the early 1970s, Patch Adams learned the promise of traditional medical practice. He also learned of its limits: high costs, limited access, and a narrow appreciation of patient health. His philosophy seeks to make good on allopathic medicine’s strengths while shoring up its weaknesses.

Above all, laughter, joy, and creativity are integral to Adams’s model of healthcare practice. He believes that doctors and patients should be partners in care, working together in mutual respect and trust. Allopathic methods and alternative techniques each have a place in this approach. Adams didn’t just draw up a new framework for medical practice: he implemented it and proved its success.

The Gesundheit Institute

Before he graduated from medical school, Adams and a handful of other young doctors formed the Gesundheit! Institute. From 1971 to 1983, they provided free medical care from a facility they designed and built it in rural West Virginia. Intended at first as a pilot project testing their model, the facility served more than 15,000 patients over 12 years.

Having proved their model’s efficacy, Adams and his colleagues began laying the groundwork for a complete medical facility. Today, the Gesundheit! Institute occupies 321 acres in Hillsboro, West Virginia, and plans are underway for its cornerstone facility. The Teaching Center will host a hospital and educational facilities in a 25,000-sq. ft. solar-powered building. Four other buildings have already been built, funded almost entirely by donations.

Global speaker: Patch Adams

Adams also travels the world, bringing joy and critical medical attention to underserved populations. Key to his global outreach work is a strong conviction that local healthcare can become more resilient by empowering communities to be the primary agents in their own healing.

Wherever he goes, Adams takes aim at the four major issues detracting from equitable health care delivery. Rising costs, abuse of third-party insurance schemes, rampant malpractice suits, and the broad dehumanization of medicine are his targets.