Doctor Friend in the Ghetto

Dr. Irving Silverman '34 believes in talking about the problems of health services for inner-city ghetto residents, to whom medical care has all too often been only crisis care in an emergency room a $3.00 cab ride from home.

He also believes in doing something about them.

Five years ago Dr. Silverman gave up a comfortable 20-year private practice in pediatrics in Newton, Mass., to become full-time Director of the Children and Youth Program at Roxbury's Dimock Community Health Center. For several years before that he had devoted part-time to the health needs of the children of Roxbury, as a member of a team of pediatricians from Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. As the program grew from beginnings in Beth Israel's Outpatient Clinic to a full-fledged community health center, Dr. Silverman became more and more involved with the problems of his young patients, until in 1967 he quit his private practice entirely.

He credits Dr. Robert Berg '49, Chief of Pediatrics at Beth Israel, who began the program in 1964, with an infectious enthusiasm and dedication to the cause "which rubbed off on me." He cites another reason: "I felt that solo practice was about ready to go to that Nirvana where the horse and buggy doctor is resting."

As Alternate State Chairman of the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and as Councillor of the Massachusetts Medical Society, he observed "that the majority of physicians were dedicated, responsible, well-meaning men devoted to their practices and too busy to do anything else. They were unaware that the infant mortality rate in Roxbury was over 40 per 1000 live births as compared to 16 in Weston. They had little idea of the hostility and mistrust that was building up in the ghetto because of the cold, impersonal, and inaccessible medical care they were getting in some emergency wards."

The 6000 young patients and their families are getting from the Roxbury center not only the sound health care, preventive as well as crisis, that they lacked before, but also the warmth and understanding that is an essential part of treating the "whole man." According to the program's nursing supervisor, Dr. Silverman "is just like a father, but he never says 'no.' He wants to do everything for everybody, and the patients love him." A varsity football player at Dartmouth and an All-State lineman at Norwood High School in Massachusetts, he manages an occasional workout with the children at the clinic. Some of them even call him "coach."

Irving Silverman, who is also an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School, is one M.D. who puts his stethoscope where his heart is.

Dr. Irving Silverman '34