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| Volume 46, Number 2, Fall 1998 |
NASW life member H. Jack Geiger, MD, has been awarded the Institute of Medicine’s Gustav O. Lienhard Award and the 1998 Sedgwick Memorial Medal for Distinguished Service in Public Health.
Geiger cut his writing teeth (at age 16) as a police reporter for the Madison Capitol Times. Following WWII, he was a pre-med student by day and did rewrites for International News Service (INS) at night. He interrupted his studies from 1948-1954 to become INS science editor but the pull of science was too great, and in 1954 he entered med school.
Geiger, now emeritus professor at the City University of New York Medical School, received the Lienhard Award and Sedgwick Medal in recognition of his many contributions toward improving access to health care for underserved populations. In 1965, he proposed two innovative community health center demonstration projects—one urban, one rural—to deliver health care to medically underserved, low-income and minority populations. The model subsequently was replicated throughout the United States. He later helped draft legislation that created a national network of community health centers that today numbers 850 centers with 2,200 delivery sites providing comprehensive health, environmental and social support services to more than 8 million low-income urban, rural and migrant-worker clients most of whom have incomes at the federal poverty level.