In the early 1990s, while the American Academy of Pediatrics was formalizing its vision of the “medical home,” we were already living it, without a name, without a policy statement, and without institutional applause. At Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, our pediatric team operationalized what would later be codified: interdisciplinary care, family partnership, coordinated services, and continuity across settings. We did not call it a medical home. We …

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The vow was not ceremonial. It was lived.

We were in Waverly, Ohio on 9/11, a town that did not make headlines, but held its own kind of gravity. The clinic was open. Kathy was chasing after Robert, age 8, who had darted toward the library at the end of the street, eager to explore its corners before school resumed. She did not call him back. She followed. That was the …

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The desegregation bus crash

I was nearly killed in a desegregation bus crash. They called it progress, but it felt like degradation. We were children, packed into metal boxes and sent across neighborhoods like test subjects. The crash was more than metal and blood, it was a system shattering itself. I survived, and I have spent the rest of my life making sure no child has to survive reform just to …

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