A practicing orthopedic surgeon, James Cobey has for decades been committed to international social activism. In the 1970s he helped coordinate the Red Cross disaster relief effort in refugee camps on Thailand's Cambodian border. In the 1980s he founded Health Volunteers Overseas, which annually sends hundreds of doctors, nurses, dentists and therapists to help developing nations create sustainable local medical programs. Then, in 1991, Physicians for Human Rights invited Cobey to conduct the first epidemiological study of landmine injuries among Cambodia's civilian population. That effort became a book, Landmines in Cambodia: A Coward's War; the book became one of the fundamental charters – and Cobey an early member – of the nascent International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). In 1997 he joined several dozen other members of the organization in Stockholm, where the ICBL campaign and campaign coordinator Jody Williams were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. |
James Cobey, MD, MPH '71
