Peace & Health: How a group of small-town activists and college students set out to change healthcare

by Charles Barber

Overview

The story of how the work of one small group of people grew to meet the size of their calling: to ensure that Health Care is a Right, Not a Privilege.

Peace & Health is the story behind this improbable effort: the 20-year-old who plants the flag in his small hometown of Middletown, Connecticut; the daughter of a sharecropper, who made her way north during the great migration and becomes the North Star of the drive to transform health in the community; the son of a Jewish émigré and pharmacist who breaks from his peers to support the cause; the musician who played in the big bands of the South in the 1930's, who loses his teeth and is now determined to make sure others do not lose theirs; and the college student and future US Senator who helps buy the building so the free clinic would not be shut down permanently. A young nurse-practitioner joins the organization as it expands beyond one Connecticut town, and today, CHC and its Weitzman Institute operate programs across the US, transforming the delivery of health care for populations who have been ignored.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781959262022
Publisher:	Octoberworks
Publication date:	11/04/2022
Pages:	178
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.46(d)

About the Author

Charles Barber is a Writer in Residence at Wesleyan University and a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Yale. He has written widely on mental health and criminal justice issues, both in popular and scholarly publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Salon, The Nation and Scientific American Mind. Charlie has appeared on the BBC, CNN, CBS News, and NPR's Fresh Air. Charlie was educated at Harvard and Columbia Universities. He lives in Connecticut with his family.

Editorial Reviews

03/20/2023

Barber (Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation) tells a rousing story of citizen disruption centered on the Community Health Center (CHC) in Middletown, Connecticut. Starting from a small free dental clinic, the CHC grew into a free health care institution serving thousands each year and having a positive impact on people—and other nonprofits inspired by its success—across the country. Although it faced opposition from the medical establishment, political leaders, and what Barber identifies as its home state’s “steady habits,” the CHC overcame these challenges to provide care for many people who desperately needed it. The book closes with a description of the CHC’s work in managing and staffing mass vaccination clinics for COVID-19, which Barber sees as proof of the institution’s continued ability to treat patients with a “consuming relentlessness.”

Barber centers the story on the contributions, philosophy, and organizational skills of Mark Masselli, who founded CHC at age 22 and eventually saw it flourish, but he also describes the many other people who have contributed to the success of the institution over the years, from Lillian Reba Moses, a leader in the Middletown community and long-time board member to Margaret Flinter, a nurse practitioner who joined CHC in 1980 and transformed its clinical care. Peace & Health is rich in illustrations, providing strong visual appeal to go along with the compelling story.

The story of the CHC is, in many ways, the story of the free clinic movement in America – from its founding as one of a wave of clinics to the Community Development Block Grant program and its eventual status as a Federally Qualified Health Center (and FQHC Look-Alike). Barber does an excellent job sharing the CHC’s history—and its vision of health care as a right. A reader interested in the history of free clinics, or health care in general, will find Peace & Health fascinating and inspiring.

Takeaway: The fascinating story of Connecticut’s Community Health Center, a visionary free clinic.

Great for fans of: Gregory L. Weiss’s Grassroots Medicine, Catherine Mas’s Culture in the Clinic.

Production grades Cover: B+ Design and typography: A Illustrations: A Editing: A Marketing copy: A-

BookLife Reviews

"Excellent...a rousing story of citizen disruption centered on the [visionary] Community Health Center in Middletown, Connecticut. A reader interested in the history of free clinics, or health care in general, will find Peace & Health fascinating and inspiring."

- Publishers Weekly

"Libraries and readers interested not just in healthcare advocacy, but the process of reinventing a system from the microcosm of building a clinic and pathways to using it will find Peace & Health not just idealistic and inspiring, but practical in charting routes to achieving community goals."

- Midwest Book Review

"A colorfully presented and encouraging history of an important community institution."

- Kirkus Reviews

"An antidote to modern cynicism. Charles Barber brilliantly tells the astonishing story of how an idea - healthcare as a right for all - can become a reality in one community. If you think it can't be done, read this book!"

- Danielle Ofri, MD, author of When We Do Harm: A Doctor Confronts Medical Error

"Peace & Health reads like a novel but is all true: an inspiring story about community-based healthcare too easily ignored amidst medicine's penchant for high-tech care."

- Joseph J. Fins, MD, Professor of Medicine and Medical Ethics, Weill Cornell Medical College

"In this affecting and expertly crafted book, Charles Barber tells the story of how a few inspired, resourceful, militantly decent people created from scratch an enduring institution that makes a lot of people's lives better. A much-needed reminder of what we're capable of at our best."

--- Carlo Rotella, PhD, Professor of English, Boston College, and author of The World Is Always Coming to an End: Pulling Together and Apart in a Chicago Neighborhood

"For those committed to community engagement, Peace & Health provides a deep wellspring of hope."

- Chyrell Bellamy, PhD, Director, Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health

"More than a history of healthcare innovation, this book celebrates the passion that drives change in the world."

- Ian Roberts, MD, Professor of Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

From the Publisher

2023-03-03
A chronicle of Middletown, Connecticut’s Community Health Center from its modest beginnings in the 1970s to its frontline fight against Covid-19 today.

In October 1973, recent college dropout Mark Masselli rolled out a sleeping bag in the cold, dangerous North End of Middletown, Connecticut. For three days he half-slept outside the building at 631 Main St. to ambush the delinquent leasee for the keys to the abandoned Carrie Plumbing & Heating Company, soon to be the neighborhood’s Community Health Center. Such was the modest beginning and first location of the CHC, which over the next several decades would evolve from a much-needed independent free clinic providing dental services and sickle cell anemia screenings to a federally qualified health center with numerous locations. Mark, educated in the activism of the 1970s and assisted by proximity to Wesleyan University, was aided by others, including pharmacists, doctors, and community figures who believed in the basic tenet that “healthcare is a right and not a privilege.” They would work to bring patient-centered care to overlooked poor, immigrant, and minority citizens. The steady growth of the CHC and the champions behind it are beautifully featured in pages of full-color and black-and-white photos and news clippings as well as sobering early balance sheets. Their battles, including bureaucratic fights with a callous city hall, prepared the CHC to later respond quickly to the Covid-19 pandemic. Barber’s book boasts attractive layouts and design, vibrantly presenting a thorough timeline of the CHC, its innovations and expansions, and the development of its internationally recognized research entity, the Weitzman Institute. The story is as much about Masselli as a personality as it is about the clinics he founded, and it effectively captures his devotion to equity in health care through shared missives and regular examples of leadership through listening. Still, the book can be a bit dry and textbooklike in its presentation, which might have been alleviated by more expansive interviews and testimonials. Overall, though, there’s a hopefulness in seeing such important services not only surviving, but thriving.

A colorfully presented and encouraging history of an important community institution.

Kirkus Reviews