Advocating for Equality in Health Care Neil calman
“A lot of times these kids never get the kind of health care they should”
by angela barbuti
Dr. Neil Calman has spent his career working to establish equality in health care.
“Health is a fundamental right for people,” he said. “But unfortunately, the way we deliver health care in the United States, and even more so in New York, is that we create separate systems of care for people who are poor and people who have money. And the care is not equal in quality.”
While on his rotations as a medical student in Chicago, he had already witnessed differences in levels of care. Although people in the medical field believed that everyone, regardless of economic status, should have access to health care, not all agreed that the quality of care needed to be the same, Calman said.
“They believe that poor people should be happy with whatever they get because there’s no real obligation to care for them,” said Calman, who practiced family medicine in the Bronx and Manhattan for 35 years.
In 1983, he created the Institute for Family Health, a nonprofit organization that provides medical, dental and mental health care under the credo that “no one is turned away.” About 550,000 people are seen annually by a staff of 1,200 in 30 locations in the Bronx, Manhattan and Dutchess and Ulster Counties. People who are poor, uninsured or undocumented are taken care of at no charge. The institute gets its funding from the government, including from Medicaid and Medicare, and from grants.
One of the diseases on which the center focuses and educates is diabetes, as it sees a higher percentage of cases of the disease in low-income communities. Calman says some of the reasons for this as the lack of healthy food options, places to exercise and health education.
“I just ran into a gym teacher who covers 11 schools in New York. One gym teacher for 11 schools, and these are big, inner city schools,” he said. The institute also cares for patients living with HIV/AIDS. “We help people with medication, housing, nutritional and family counseling,” he said.
Through his guidance, the Institute for Family Health has opened five health centers in schools in low-income areas, staffed with doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and social workers. Two are in Manhattan, at P.S. 57 on East 115th Street and at the High School of Fashion Industries on West 24th Street.
“A lot of times these kids never get the kind of health care they should and when you deliver the health care inside the school, you up the access to kids who otherwise wouldn’t have it,” he said.
Calman also started the Department of Family Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in 2012 and now serves as its chair.
“The goal of that department, largely, is to find young doctors in training who are interested in doing work for the future in primary health care,” he said. “We hope they will become family physicians and follow in our footsteps and work in underserved communities.”