BGU | MY PATH, Haim Doron, MD

EDITORS’ NOTE In the foreword to his earlier work Medicine in the Community (2004), the late Haim Doron wrote that in all his years of action, he was guided by a “deep belief in a self-realizing Zionism and a process for ‘the ingathering Jews from the Diaspora’ that would envelop the vision of an egalitarian public medical framework founded on the principles of mutual assistance, while assuring the best level of medicine as one of the cornerstones of Israeli society.” This wasn’t merely a slogan; indeed, these principles were a “Pillar of Fire,” a lantern at his feet, for Professor Haim Doron throughout the fifty years he served as one of the leaders and architects of the public health system in Israel. This autobiographical work by Prof. Doron was born in the course of a project carried out by the National Institute for Health Policy Research to document the work of the leaders and founders, path-makers and architects of the health system in Israel, an initiative designed to mark the first two decades since inauguration of Israel’s National Health Insurance Law (1994). In this framework and even prior to it, Prof. Haim Doron had been interviewed at length - tens of hours of videotapes -- on “his path in the health system” as he labeled it. The initiative to publish a book dedicated to his life and life endeavors within the health system in Israel was fueled by the tapes and the rich material they contained. I didn’t know at the time that Prof. Doron was living on borrowed time, and we were exceedingly fortunate that we could complete the interviews before he died in November 2017. The work at hand constitutes a primary source about the legacy Prof. Doron’s left behind, and his tremendous impact on the shape of the health system on Israel. The taped and videotaped interviews that served as the basis for this work will be archived at the National Institute for Health Services and Health Policy, where they will be available in full for scholars who wish to learn firsthand about the history of the public health system in Israel in more detail. As an autobiography based on interviews conducted with Prof. Doron, we invested a great effort to preserve the author’s ‘voice,’ distinctive speech patterns, and narrative flow, placing details about the individuals he mentions in recapping events in footnotes, alongside other explanatory passages with subtext for the readers of this English edition. Prof. Doron placed in our hands the task of editing the work a short time prior to his passing, and we did our best in the editing process to preserve the spirit of his narrative. Veterans of the health system who read this work in Hebrew will be familiar with many of the topics discussed, including events that will hit home for those readers who may have also played a personal role in this or that juncture. Younger readers will encounter in this book documentation on a unique figure -- one of the ‘lion kings’ of the public health system in Israel whose entire life was bound up in realization of the foundational principles of a health system for Israel based on “justice, equality, and mutual assistance” he so believed in. Prof. Doron more than once that his motto to be effective and get results was “think before you act; getting action begins with forethought.” Even when those surrounding him were skeptical, in the end they were forced to admit he had been right all along. Thus, core concepts such as family medicine and regional health centers that he conceived of, were born and put into action. In the same manner, finding the right path to realize a vision succeeded time and again -- including the establishment of the school of medicine at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Israel National Institute for Health Policy Research. Prof. Doron said that those who are convinced of the worthiness of an idea should never give up; they only need to wait for the right opportunity to arise, to realize their goal, and put their ideas into action. This wasn’t just a

7