![]() “We are committed to building a community that embodies to the extreme the philosophy that art, fun, and connectedness are as important to health as CAT scans and IVs,” writes Adams in Gesundheit!, the book that helped inspire the film Patch Adams. The institute’s ultimate goal is to open a 40-bed hospital in rural West Virginia that offers free, holistic care to anyone who wants it. It has since evolved into a far-reaching and multi-faceted nonprofit among its programs are “humanitarian clowning” trips, which Adams has lead for more than 20 years, taking people dressed in full clown costume to hospitals, orphanages, and prisons around the world. Shortly after graduating from medical school in the early 1970s, he founded what would become the Gesundheit Institute, which started as a free medical practice operating out of his own home in Virginia. That film is many things Adams is not: predictable, sappy, and apolitical.Īdams, 62, became famous within medical circles, and then to the rest of the world, as a doctor in clown’s clothing, a social activist who uses humor and his medical training to advocate for a more humane, affordable, and even playful health care system. Hunter “Patch” Adams became a household name through the 1998 Robin Williams film based on his life. ![]()
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