HELPING JEWISH FAMILIES GROW'

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Take This Little Hand

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There once was a girl from around here
She was pretty from ear to ear
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Writing poems makes us all want to cheer!

Drop By Drop

How an Israeli program
helped secure
good health for the
country's children.
But could it work here
in the United States?

Dr. Gary Freed
comes from Texas,
but he knows Israel.

Elizabeth Applebaum
AppleTree Editor

T

hey do things big in Texas.
Maybe that's why a young medical student
named Gary Freed, a third generation Texan "and
proud of it," didn't give just a cursory glance to an innov-
ative health-care program he learned about in Israel.
The program is called Tipat Chalav (A Drop of Milk),
which oversees preventive care (and specifically immu-
nizations) for children throughout Israel. Managed in con-
junction with the Ministry of Health, Tipat Chalav is
administered through a system of neighborhood health
clinics where nurses and parents work together to see
that each child receives all the necessary vaccines.
. The program has been so successful that,
according to the Ministry of Health, more than
90 percent of children under 2 have been
immunized in Israel.
Dr. Freed, today director of general pedi-
atrics and associate chair for primary care and
community pediatrics at the University of Michi-
gan, first learned about Tipat Chalav while in
Beersheva and Jerusalem, where he studied for
six months as part of his medical training. Since
then, he has written a number of reports about
Tipat Chalav, including hypothesizing whether it
might be implemented in the United States.
"There's been some interest from [the Federa-
tion's] Partnership 2000, to see whether Tipat
Chalav could help disadvantaged children in
the Detroit area," he said. "But what would
have to be taken into account is the very differ-
ent ways in which our societies are organized,
and exactly how much government involvement
we want in our health care."
While in Israel, Dr. Freed conducted research
in association with the Brookdale Institute, an

THE BIG STORY on page 86

