FEATURE

BY DAN HAWKINS JACK GEIGER: OUR FOUNDING FATHER AND SO MUCH MORE

As we in the health center movement celebrate the Atlantic, always at risk for being blown out of the water by a German the 50th anniversary of our founding this year, U-Boat. it is most appropriate that we celebrate the life Following the war, Jack finished his undergraduate work and became and achievements of one of our co-founders — a medical science reporter. Then he decided to study medicine. As a Dr. H. Jack Geiger. Jack is a unique and very student at Case Western Reserve special individual, and has been so for all of Medical School in Cleveland, OH, he wangled a fellowship to study his 90 years. healthcare in (then-apartheid) South Africa, where he assisted the legendary British public health ex- perts Sidney and Emily Kark, who In 1940, at the tender age of Powell, and Billie Holiday. His had spearheaded a new “Communi- fourteen, Jack ran away from experience over that period set the ty Oriented Primary Care” (COPC) his middle-class Jewish home in course for the remainder of his model of care in the homelands of Brooklyn and knocked on the door remarkable life. South Africa. There, Jack witnessed of an eminent African-American First, as World War II broke out, a model of care that he later said actor named Canada Lee. He had Jack felt a duty to serve, but he was so quintessentially American in met Mr. Lee a few months before refused to enlist in a service that nature but did not exist anywhere when his parents had taken him discriminated against African- in the U.S. But a few short years to see a play in Harlem, and had Americans, or any American of later, he would have the opportu- been invited backstage to meet the color. That eliminated the Army, nity to introduce that model back venerable thespian. Jack asked Lee Navy, Air Force, and Marines home in America. if he could move in with him. After — leaving the only remaining calling Jack’s parents to alert them Following completion of his uniformed service, the Merchant and alleviate their concerns, Lee medical training, Jack and a fel- Marines. After his training, he man- said yes. Geiger spent a full year in low physician, Dr. Count Gibson, aged to get assigned to the only boat Lee’s Harlem apartment, mixing founded the Medical Committee captained by an African-American, with many of the great figures of the for Human Rights as the healthcare the USS Booker T. Washington, and Harlem renaissance — people like arm of the American Civil Rights spent the rest of the war ferrying Langston Hughes, Billy Strayhorn, Movement. Jack and Count walked arms and other vital goods across Richard Wright, Adam Clayton beside the Reverend Dr. Martin 16 50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE I SPRING 2015 Luther King, Jr. and others during many of the seminal moments of the movement. In early 1965, when the freedom marchers were brutally attacked on “Bloody Sunday” as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the road from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, Jack and Count rendered life-saving medi- cal treatment to several of them, including the young civil rights leader John Lewis. Lewis’ injuries were severe enough that he needed hospital care, but Jack and Count knew that there was not a hospi- tal in the South that would accept him, so Count — then the Chair of Tufts University Medical School’s Department of Preventive Medicine — arranged to have him medi- cally evacuated to Tufts Hospital in Boston, where life-saving care was provided. Today, Lewis represents the 5th District of Georgia in the United States Congress. In those sometimes dark but always hopeful early days of the fight for American justice and equality, Jack and Count revealed to each comprehensive primary health other their shared dedication to From left: Dr. H. Jack Geiger, Delta care with public health and com- Health Center CEO John A. Fairman healthcare as a basic human right. munity economic development and and his daughter Madeline, and U.S. Jack spoke of his life-changing Senator Roger Wicker at 2013 ground- empowerment. Both men spent experience with the Karks in the breaking ceremony in Mississippi for the next several years of their lives a new health center facility named in community-based health clinics in helping to develop those first health honor of Geiger. South Africa. Shortly after, Jack and centers and formulating the unique Count persuaded officials at Presi- character of the American Health but also opening the broader doors dent Lyndon Johnson’s vanguard Center Movement, where it remains of the healthcare system to popula- War on Poverty agency (the Office unchanged to this day, as a system tions at greatest health risk. of Equal Opportunity) to invest in a of care that is of the community, by pilot effort to deliver healthcare in Beyond Jack’s seminal contribu- the community, and for the com- disenfranchised inner-city and rural tion to community health centers is munity being served. Over nearly a communities. his enormous body of work in civil half-century, the model has grown and human rights, both in the U.S. The first health centers opened exponentially, not only providing and around the world. Jack was a their doors in 1965, combining the highest quality primary care, founding member of the Congress

COMMUNITY HEALTH FORUM® 7 1 JACK GEIGER CONTINUED of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1943 and was Civil Liberties Chairman of In South Africa, Jack witnessed a the American Veterans Committee model of care that he later said was from 1947-51, leading campaigns to end racial discrimination in hospi- so quintessentially American in nature tal care and admission to medical schools. but did not exist anywhere in the U.S. In the global arena, Jack is a found- ing member and Past President Following the collapse of apartheid, rights. He is a spokesperson of of Physicians for Human Rights he served as a consultant to South unsurpassed eloquence for health, (PHR), which received the Nobel Africa’s Ministry of Health and as a medicine, and human rights, whose Prize for Peace in 1998 for its ef- member of the consultative mis- life’s work has been recognized by forts to investigate and document sion to South Africa’s Truth and the medical schools at Columbia human rights abuses, war crimes Reconciliation Commission. He University, Case Western Reserve, and crimes against humanity, and was an NGO delegate to the United the State University of New York, to provide medical and humanitar- Nations Conference on Racism and St. Louis University, Harvard, and ian aid to victims of repression. He Discrimination, in Durban in 2000. Morehouse; by the National Medi- served as expert medical consultant cal Association and the national Jack was also a founding member on the United Nations Human Blue Cross-Blue Shield Association; of Physicians for Social Responsibil- Rights Center’s mission to the by the American Public Health ity and was a co-author of the first former Yugoslavia, and led PHR Association and by South Africa’s major publication in the U.S. on the human rights missions to Bosnia, Ministry of Health; by the Na- medical consequences of nuclear Iraq and Kurdistan, the West Bank tional Academy of Sciences and its war. He led a PSR delegation to the and Gaza Strip, as well as to Central Institute of Medicine; and by the Soviet Union to explore the health and South America, Asia, and the Massachusetts League of Commu- consequences of the Chernobyl nu- former Soviet Union. Most recently, nity Health Centers and our own clear accident in 1986. He received his work has focused on racial and National Association of Community the Award of Merit in Global Public ethnic disparities in healthcare in Health Centers. the U.S. and abroad. Health from the Public Health As- sociation of New York in 1982. The results of Jack’s life-long efforts He is a founding member of the can be seen in thousands of com- Today, Jack is the Arthur C. Logan Committee for Health in Southern munities throughout the nation, Professor Emeritus of Community Africa (CHISA) and was a member and his contributions to healthcare Medicine, City University of New of a special mission to South Africa and human rights rank among the York Medical School. A recipient on the Health Effects of Apartheid. most important of the past half of numerous awards and honors, He was an organizer of the Con- century, none more so than the in- he has authored more than 100 ference on Health Care for Post- troduction of the community health scientific articles, book chapters Apartheid South Africa in Maputo, center model into America. u Mozambique in 1990, and served as and monographs on topics rang- a Distinguished Visiting Professor ing from the medical consequences at the University of Natal Faculty of of nuclear war to the impact of Dan Hawkins is NACHC Senior Medicine in Durban, South Africa, poverty, segregation, and racism Vice President for Public Policy and where he had first met the Karks as on health and the role of physi- Research. a visiting medical student in 1957. cians in the protection of human

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