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Palestinian-American doctor and professor Fareed Fareed.

New York physician and Columbia assistant professor Fareed Nabiel Fareed has always been moved by the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., that "of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane." That, and his parents' advice that "he was so good at science he should be a doctor," led him to become one of the youngest board-certified faculty members at Columbia Medical School.

Specializing in emergency medicine, Dr. Fareed launched GlobalACLS in 2007 to bring recent life-saving advances in cardiac life support to the developing world. "High quality CPR doesn't require costly equipment, and study after study confirms that it saves lives. Disseminating the latest information through formalized training has become my passion."

Dr. Fareed was born in Washington State in 1975 to Palestinian immigrants, and received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College. He was raised in Long Island, New York but traveled to Palestine every few years to visit relatives and his family's olive groves. "My relatives would take us from Nablus to the beach, or to Jerusalem. Getting into the West Bank was a bit of a struggle, but once we got there it was like a summer vacation."

Returning to Palestine in June 2006 after a nine-year absence, he noticed a striking change. "The environment seemed more hopeless, more complicated, more pessimistic." Fareed decided to make a difference.

"You go to Palestine, and you witness a resource-poor environment, where basic primary care needs are not met. More disturbing, you see barriers to care - physical barriers, the Wall, checkpoints, delays in travel from one town to another - so that if you get sick in Palestine and need emergent specialized care, you're in trouble. People there are not getting a fair shake. As a physician, this is unsettling."

Working with Physicians for Peace, Dr. Fareed led a course in advanced cardiac life support for Palestinian physicians and nurses from around the West Bank. Although a large amount of donated training equipment was held up at the Israeli airport, he and his colleagues used what was available locally and certified 20 Palestinians according to the latest American Heart Association guidelines.

In addition to his position at Columbia University, Dr. Fareed is an Attending Physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He is a National Institutes of Health Research Fellowship Recipient and a member of the Palestine Liaison Committee of the National Arab American Medical Association.