Medicine wrestles with a persistent question: What does it mean to care for the vulnerable when resources are scarce and suffering is relentless? In an era when global health is often reduced to short-term interventions and metrics, the deeper moral demands of accompaniment can fade from view. Dr. Rick Hodes challenges this narrowing of vision. In his upcoming talk for the Woll Family Speaker Series, he invites us to consider medicine not as a transaction, but as a sustained moral commitment.
Drawing on more than three decades of work in Ethiopia, Dr. Hodes will share stories of children with complex cardiac and spinal conditions and of a physician who chose to stay. He explores the ethical tensions of caring for patients whose needs far exceed available resources, and asks what obligations endure when the usual boundaries of training, geography, and time fall away.
Dr. Hodes is an internist who has lived and worked in Ethiopia since the mid-1980s. His work brings children to the United States for life-saving care while strengthening local medical capacity. We are honored to welcome Dr. Hodes to the Woll Family Speaker Series for a conversation that will challenge, inspire, and reframe how we think about moral responsibility in medicine.

We are grateful to co-sponsor this talk with Global Reach.