Peace & Health: How a Group of Small-Town Activists and College Students Set Out to Change Healthcare

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.