Goats and Soda

Ophelia Dahl, cofounder of the global group Partners in Health, is the recipient of the 2023 Radcliffe Medal from Harvard University, awarded each year to “an individual who has had a transformative impact on society.” Partners in Health builds local partnerships to address health issues. Dahl was hailed for her “unfailing optimism, clarity of vision and unsurpassed ability to get the work done.”

Ben Gabbe/Getty Images for Greenwich International Film Festival

“I don’t think in terms of years,” says Ophelia Dahl with a laugh. “I think in terms of decades.”

It’s two days before she is to receive Harvard’s prestigious Radcliffe Medal, which has gone to such luminaries as Madeleine Albright, Toni Morrison and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the health-care and social justice advocate is taking the time to sit in her Boston home and reflect on what she hopes will soon change in global health — and her realistic assessment of how long it will take for major improvements.

It has been 36 years since Dahl cofounded Partners in Health (PIH) — an international public health nonprofit known for its community-based approach and redefining health-care possibilities in some of the most difficult situations — with Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, Todd McCormack and Tom White in Haiti’s rural Central Plateau. Since then, their team has grown to 14,000 people worldwide, providing lifesaving care and training in some of the most in-need countries in the world, including Sierra Leone and Rwanda.

Dahl — a director’s fellow at the MIT Media Lab and trustee of Wellesley College who also helps lead the Roald Dahl Literary Estate, which manages her late father’s works — was PIH’s executive director for 16 years and now chairs its board of…