Medicine and community: innovations at Yale-New Haven Medical Center to meet the challenges.

E. Richard Weinerman, M.D. was for many years one of the most articulate, bold, and creative of our national health care leaders. His penchant for truth, order, and a better life for all men involved him deeply in such varied fields as the delivery of comprehensive health services, administrative organization of hospital ambulatory care, group practice evaluation, national health insurance, international comparative health studies, teaching, public health research, law, politics, civil rights, environmental pollution, and many others. The rich legacy of Dick and Shirley Weinerman is the very large number of colleagues and students whom they challenged and motivated to respond to the pressures for improvement in the health care system for all people. It is most appropriate to review the innovative contributions initiated by Dr. Weinerman during the past eight years at the Yale-New Haven Medical Center which dealt with improved health care services, as well as teaching and research. Although the main subject concerns the professional activities of Dr. Weinerman as Professor of Medicine and Public Health and Director of Ambulatory Services at Yale, it has equal relevance to Shirley Basch Weinerman. This husband and wife team were an inseparable unity for work, play, travel, companionship, parenthood, and even scientific collaboration in international health studies. (85) t The accomplishments for which Dick Weinerman achieved national and world recognition could not have been possible without the constant and unselfish support and devotion of his partner, Shirley. This important fact should be remembered in reviewing the accomplishments of E. Richard Weinerman, health care leader, at Yale. Dr. Weinerman, for some time, had been declaring that the national health care system is in serious crisis, and our entire societal structure is challenged to find solutions. He recognized the medical centers and teaching hospitals as the most appropriate of our institutions for initiating change. (82) This is so because of their relationship to the community power structure, their