The clinic—the only one of its kind in the United States—is geared towards providing medical and emotional treatment and support to African women who have undergone female circumcision.
Nour could not be reached for comment.
But in a University press release, she said that her personal background helped inform her work.
“Having grown up in Sudan and Egypt, female circumcision wasn’t shocking to me,” she said.
Nour said she hopes that the money will help to establish health centers in Africa similar to the practice she began here.
Another fellowship went to Jim Yong Kim, chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities and director of the Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change at HMS.
A public health physician, Kim’s work centers on the eradication of infectious disease. In the early ’80s, he co-founded Partners in Health (PIH), an international program that brings modern medical care to the poorest and the sickest.
“[The award] is a victory for people who believe in global equity,” said PIH president Ophelia Dahl, one of Kim’s close colleagues.
At Harvard, Kim developed a plan to reduce the cost of drugs to fight multi-drug resistant tuberculosis among the poor by 95 percent.
Kim, who is on leave this year and could not be reached for comment, described the award as a “huge responsibility” in a University press release.
“It would be difficult to keep much for myself. I want to find a way to accelerate what I’ve been doing for the past 15-20 years—helping the poor get access to better health care,” he said.
An adviser to the World Health Organization’s Director-General, Kim is currently devising new methods for treating people with HIV and AIDS and is aiming to get 3 million people into treatment by 2005. Kim received his M.D. at HMS in 1991 and his Ph. D. in anthropology from Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1993.
The MacArthur Fellows Program is funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and is designed to emphasize the importance of the creative individual in society. Fellows are selected for the originality and creativity of their work and the potential to do more in the future.
Harvard’s presence on this year’s list of MacArthur Fellows wasn’t limited to faculty.
Eve Troutt Powell ’83, an associate professor of history at the University of Georgia, also received an award for her study of the role of race in modern Islamic society.