BGU | MY PATH, Haim Doron, MD

David Barzilai, with whom I had a friendly relationship. We agreed to work as partners on this department. When Prof. Epstein wanted to include family medicine in the curriculum of the Technion’s medical school, Prof. Barzilai and I went to the heads of the Technion requesting they affiliate the Carmel Hospital’s family medicine department with their medical school. We brought data and explained our request. They looked at us with astonishment, as if we came from Mars. To affiliate a department of family medicine with a medical school with a marked technological bent appeared highly irregular in their eyes. We left empty-handed. Years went by until the Technion agreed to recognize the family medicine department and add it to its medical school. At a later stage, not during my tenure, the department was separated from the Technion medical school and moved to one of Clalit’s clinics in Haifa, where it is one of the best family medicine departments in Israel. Hebrew University in Jerusalem also established a department of family medicine. Dr. Avraham Harman, president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who had adamantly opposed establishment of a medical school in the Negev, ran into me at some sort of event. Harman turned to me and told me with open pleasure that he had secured a donation to establish a department of family medicine in Jerusalem. Indeed, this department, headed by Prof. Amnon Lahad, 70 is excellent. The first family medicine specialists in Israel established the Israel Association of Family Physicians, similar to doctors' associations in other specialties. The Association has played an important role in anchoring family medicine’s status and prestige, as reflected in its annual scientific conference. This gathering began as an initiative of the family medicine department in Afula but today is sponsored by the departments of family medicine at all the Israeli medical schools. A Major in Community Medicine at Tel Aviv University Another milestone in the advancement of family medicine was the opening of a study program in community medicine at Tel Aviv University. In those days Clalit’s doctors’ union was struggling against Clalit’s Clinic Branch in an effort to change the dual management of the sick fund’s clinics. This much-needed reform was achieved by setting a new policy – that the director of the clinic would be a physician. We set down certain credentials the doctor must possess. Today the position requires the clinic director be a specialist in family medicine, not just a doctor who could be a specialist in internal medicine or pediatrics. At the same time, gradually the universities were opening majors in health management that enabled administrative directors to professionalize. Slowly, the situation changed: Today the clerk in the clinic is not a political hack, but an educated person with at least an undergraduate degree in health management. Even when I was bringing about these changes, I realized that without educating the physicians in good management of a clinic, community medicine would remain a theoretical matter. To solve this problem, I opened a program in community medicine at Tel Aviv University’s School of Continuing Medical Education. Aviva Ron, who had directed Clalit’s Department of Planning and Evaluation during my tenure as general-director, coordinated this course. Each year, many physicians enrolled and studied once a week in this program. Clalit underwrote a reasonable portion of the tuition. We taught epidemiology, medical statistics, medical sociology, health management, and organization of health services in other countries. This study program became the foundation for health management as a major, which is taught today at all the universities and no small number of colleges throughout Israel. Health management is a discipline where today one can earn a Masters or PhD.

70 Prof. Amnon Lahad (1958- ) was born in Israel, studied medicine at the Hebrew University, specialized in family medicine, and earned a Master's degree in public health from the University of Washington in Seattle, USA. He directed the Shimshon Center in Bet Shemesh (1998 2016), where Prof. Doron and Prof. Yodfat established the doctor-nurse teamwork model, and beginning in 1997, he has been director of the department of family medicine at the Hebrew University. Since 2007, he has chaired the National Council for Health in the Community.

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