VOL. 23, NO. 16	FEBRUARY 27, 1998

ome things you can never learn about a person until you are a guest in his or her home.

  That is the idea behind a pilot program in which pediatric residents make house calls to learn more about their patients.

  The pilot project, which started at Columbia in fall 1997, is another educational initiative of the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, a public foundation dedicated to fostering humanism in medicine.

  Although house calls are exceedingly rare in health care today, the Gold Foundation believes that the visits can change the approach doctors take in treating their patients.

  The home visit program has its roots in a rural Southern setting. Two years ago, Leigh Donowitz, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, approached the Gold Foundation with a proposal to start a home visit program.

  That was the first pilot program in which pediatric residents made rounds visiting their patients at homes in rural Virginia.

  “When we made a site visit to the project, we learned that the doctors’ experiences had actually changed their perspectives of their patients and of how they were practicing medicine,” says Sandra O. Gold, the foundation’s co-founder and executive vice president.

  The visiting physicians learned things they would never have known without seeing firsthand, such as what kinds of pets patients have (one resident learned his newborn patient’s parents kept a python as a pet in an insecure cage), issues of sanitation and overcrowding and other valuable information.

  The feedback from the pilot program was so compelling that the foundation decided to try adapting the program to an urban setting and with internal medicine residents, which brought Columbia into the picture.

  “Columbia is the laboratory for this program, as it has been with many Gold Foundation programs,” says Arnold P. Gold, professor of clinical neurology and of clinical pediatrics and foundation co-founder and president.

  “We will study the efficacy of the program in the urban setting of Upper Manhattan and in Newark through a similar pilot program at the New Jersey Medical School. I think if it works in these settings, then it may work anywhere.”

  Arnold and Sandra Gold of the Arnold P. Gold Foundation recently presented canvas doctor’s bags to participants at an informal ceremony to inaugurate the program at Columbia.

  On hand were Dodi Meyer, associate professor of pediatrics; Mary McCord, assistant professor of pediatrics; John M. Driscoll Jr., chairman of pediatrics, and several pediatric residents.

  Meyer and McCord are both involved in overseeing the program.

  Significant support has been made by Dorothy Mills and her son George.

  Alan Handler, a psychologist and contributor to the foundation, was also in attendance. Handler and his wife, Joan, provided a financial gift in memory of his father, Jacob Handler, a family physician on the Upper West Side who visited patients in their homes.

  The program is called the Dr. Jacob Handler Home Visit Program.