division of regional medical programs A communication device designed to speed MEDICAL TRIBUNE FEATURE: "School, Hospital in Watts- the exchange of news, Willowbrook May Become a Prototype for Ghetto Care" information and data on Regional Medical Programs September 18, 1969 - Vol.3, No. 26 The August 14, 1969 issue of Medical Tribune featured the health programs being developed in the Watts-Willowbrook area of Los Angeles and related them to the support received from the California Regional Medical Program, in general, and the Area IV (Los Angeles) in particular. Reprinted by permission. Copyright {c) 1969 by MEDICAL TRIBUNE, INC. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH. EDUCATION. AND WELFARE Public Health Service © Health Services and Mental Health Administration © Bethesda. Maryland 20014 Thursday, August 14, 1969 The Only Independent Medical Newspaper in the U.S. Medical ‘Tribune Medical News Published by Medical Tribune, Inc. School, Hospital in Watts-Willowbrook May Become a Prototype for Ghetto Care Medical Tribune Report Los ANGELES—Improved medical services and training in the riot-scarred Watts- Willowbrook area here are being developed in a partnership that may become a protoype for other American ghetto communities. The experiment is creating the Charles R. Drew Postgraduate Medical School within the Martin Luther King, Jr., General Hospital, scheduled to “open late next year. The partnership has several major com- ponents—the County of Los Angeles, Re- gional Medical Programs, the Charles R. Drew Medical Society, the University of Southern California and the University of California at Los Angeles Schools of Med- icine, and a community advisory body of health professionals and laymen. Dr. Mitchell W. Spellman, former Pro- fessor of Surgery and chief medical officer for the Howard University surgery service at the District of Columbia General Hos- pital, is the dean of the new Drew School. Search committees are interviewing can- didates for chairmen of the departments of community medicine, psychiatry, in- ternal medicine, surgery, radiology, and pathology. Chairmen will soon be sought also for anesthesiology, obstetrics-gynecology, pediatrics, and physical and rehabilitative medicine. Dr. Spellman hopes to have his chairman for community medicine by early fall and most, if not all, of the rest of the department heads by the time the King Hospital admits its first patient in October, 1970. (Continued on page 3) The Regional Medical Programs Service and the California Committee on Regional Medical Programs presented the above exhibit at the Annual Meeting of the National Medical Association in San Francisco in August. The exhibit reflects Regional Medical Program involvement in the new health programs being developed in the Watts-Willowbrook area. -27 Martin Luther King, Jr., General Hospital in Watts- Willowbrook section of Los Angeles. Meanwhile task forces are pushing ahead for full de- velopment of the $23,500,000 King Hospital, which is now 25 per cent com- plete. Rising on a 30- acre site at 120th and Wilmington, it will have 394 beds and 135 bassinets, with a Dr, SPELLMAN clinical investigation unit and living quar- ters for residents and interns. The building can be expanded later to 760 beds with- out interruption of service. A major effort to shape the department of community medicine has been sup- ported by a grant from the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation. Planning confer- ences, chaired by Dr. Alonzo Yerby, head of the Department of Health Services Ad- ministration at the Harvard School of Public Health, were held in February and June, and a third is scheduled. One King Hospital-Drew school task force is developing plans for model coro- nary care and medical intensive care. An- other is preparing an application for con- struction and staffing of a mental retarda- tion center. The Drew school staff has helped the Los Angeles County Department of Men- tal Health to develop an application to the State of California for a $4,000,000 com- munity mental health center housing 50 _beds and a large integrated outpatient service. Plans are being made for an academi- cally oriented program to train allied health professionals, with a conference of nationally known experts set for October. The Watts-Willowbrook Regional Med- ical Program staff has helped the Los An- geles County Heart Association set up a summer office in south-central Los An- geles. Staffed by medical students and volunteer physicians, it is expected to be- come a year-round major program. A comprehensive stroke program for the 500,000 persons in the King Hospital service area is also being developed. Construction of the King Hospital was proposed after the 1965 summer riots in Watts, and the Drew school was incor- porated a year later. One of its incorporators, Dr. John A. Mitchell, a local surgeon who has since become a nationally acknowledged leader in community medicine, was responsible for much of the early planning for the medical center. He was appointed pro- gram director for Watts-Willowbrook RMP on July 1. With Dr. Spellman’s arrival in late January, planning and organizing activi- ties for the Drew school picked up con- siderably. Through his instigation the Markle Foundation sponsored the com- munity medicine conferences chaired by Dr. Yerby. Among the conferees are Dr. Roger O. Egeberg, the new Assistant Sec- retary for Health and Scientific Affairs, and Dr. Robert Q. Marston, director of the National Institutes of Health. The Drew school’s Department of Community Medicine is to be responsible for delivering comprehensive medical care for approximately 25,000 persons. The school itself and the King Hos- pital are to be responsible for developing and coordinating primary care services for all in the hospital service area, and as part of this plan, comprehensive care would be offered in a series of satellite health centers operated by private physi- cians and by Los Angeles County health- related agencies. To Be Affiliated With Schools Each department in the Drew school will have a strong affiliation with either the U.C.L.A. or U.S.C. medical school. No department will be affiliated with both schools, and each Drew faculty member will have a full-time equivalent faculty appointment in one, but not both, of the established medical schools. (Cont'd) -3- It is expected that the Watts-Willow- brook RMP advisory committee will con- tinue to take an active part in shaping the services and direction of the medical cen- ter, and it has recommended that a com- munity ombudsman serve as a consumer _ lobbyist to intervene on a patient’s behalf. The consensus arrived at in the June . conference, Dr. Speliman feels, could not have been agreed to without the approval of the Watts community representatives. “In a sense,” he said, “they took the original Markle conference concept and turned it around to where community service, instead of being one of several ob- jectives, becomes the foremost objective. This is certainly compatible with our ad- vancing commitment to the community and with the enlarging concept of the school’s academic mission.” It is also compatible, he feels, with the Drew school’s search for faculty members with the highest possible service and teach- ing credentials. “A sense of adventure is more likely.to come from the man with advanced knowl- edge,” he said. Concerning the RMP’s advisory com- mittee role in shaping the mission of the Drew school, committee chairman Dan Grindell, training coordinator for the manpower development training program in Los Angeles, said: “By having a cross section representing all segments of the community, where each one can say what he feels should go into the school, we’re going to have a bet- ter school. “People who live and work in the com- munity have a better understanding of the patients they are going to serve be- cause they are the patients they are going to serve.” Mr. Grindell sees the King-Drew medi- cal complex as a source of many new jobs, training for all levels of achievement, and development of new paramedical positions. “If we can do this we may set up a model for other communities throughout the country,” he said. Paul D. Ward, executive director of the California Committee on Regional Medical Programs, which is financing the development of the school, agrees. The Drew school concept, he said, “might be a prototype for other ghetto areas that will begin to build facilities for inpatient as well as ambulatory care. Cer- tainly building into a facility a compre- ‘hensive program of postgraduate medical education makes a lot of sense. “Tf we could plan all our facilities to have continuing education as part of them, we would be way ahead of the game and there might not be any need for RMP ex- cept in rural areas.” The Watts-Willowbrook experiment, Mr. Ward believes, “is really a cooperative arrangement of the best sort, involving the county in manpower development with local practitioners, the two medical schools and the community itself.” Several of Nation’s Health Leaders Helping to Shape Drew School Goals Medical Tribune Report Los ANGELES—Several of the nation’s health leaders are helping to shape the goals and direction of the Charles R. Drew Postgraduate Medical School, now being organized in the Watts-Willowbrook area here. , Under a grant from the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation, the conferees have met twice and plan a third meeting, with Dr. Alonzo Yerby, head of the Harvard School of Public Health Department of Health Services Administration, as their chairman. The Markle conferees include Dr. Paul B. Cornely, head of the Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Howard University, and president-elect, American Public Health Association; Dr. Kurt W. Deuschle, chairman of commu- nity medicine, MountSinai School of Medi- cine, New York; Dr. Sidney S. Lee, asso- ciate dean, Harvard Medical School; Dr. Chester Pierce, Professor of Psychiatry, University of Oklahoma School of Medi- cine; Dr. Henry S. Williams, president, board of directors, Charles R. Drew Post- graduate Medical School; Paul Yivisaker, Ph.D., New Jersey Commissioner of Community Affairs; Mrs. Winthrop Rockefeller, a member of the Drew school board of directors. Others are Dr. Roger O. Egeberg, former University of Southern California dean of medicine and now HEW Assistant Secretary for Health and Scientific Affairs; ' Dr. Sherman M. Mellinkoff, dean of the U.C.L.A. School of Medicine; Dr. M. Al- fred Haynes, Associate Professor of Inter- national Health and Public Health Admin- istration, Johns Hopkins; Dr. Lester Bres- low, U.C.L.A. Professor of Health Serv- ices Administration and president of the A.P.H.A.; Dr. Elmer A. Anderson, medi- cal director, Martin Luther King, Jr.— Los Angeles County General Hospital; -4- Dan Grindell, chairman, Watts-Willow- brook Regional Medical Programs Advi- sory Committee; Dr. Robert Q. Marston, director, National Institutes of Health; Dr Stanley Olson, director, Division of Re- gional Medical Programs; Dr. Rodney Powell, director, South Central Multipur- pose Neighborhood Health Service Cen- ter, Watts; Dr. Milton I. Roemer, U.C.L.A. Professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health; Dr. George Tarjan, Pro- fessor of Psychiatry, U.C.L.A. Neuro- psychiatric Institute, Dr. Robert Tran- quada, chairman, U.S.C. Department of Community Health.