It was a time of social upheaval and racial discontent. Those in poorer areas didn’t have good access to medical care certainly less than others elsewhere who were wealthier (and typically whiter). Neither did they have the same career opportunities.
In Pittsburgh in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Freedom House Ambulance Service presented a pioneering answer to both problems, training residents of the city’s underserved areas as paramedics to deliver elite prehospital care back to neglected neighborhoods like their own. And while it lasted less than a decade, it demonstrated that with the right resources and will, pipelines could be built to craft worthy candidates in need of a chance into dedicated caregivers that returned quality help to their communities.