Class of 1970 Commemorative Biographical Book

R O B E R T J . L E R E R

Continued

The chronic trauma of watching the daily news about the Vietnam War. The violent riots that engulfed our campus following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Adventure weekend journey to Virginia to watch a total eclipse of the sun. My career path included joining the largest pediatric group in greater Cincinnati after finishing residency at Yale in 1973. I retired as a senior partner three years ago. In 1975, I was asked by our county commissioners and members of the Board of Health to fill the suddenly vacant dual positions of medical director and health commissioner, which I accepted. I have stepped down recently from those two appointments but remain a consultant to the Butler County Health Department, tenth largest in Ohio. I recently received recognition as the longest serving commissioner of health in Ohio’s history. I joined the clinical faculty at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in 1973 and still teach a class on international health. I have published over 20 articles in peer reviewed journals. I was the founder and first director of the first two NICUs in our county. In 1973, I was one of the founders of the Children’s Diagnostic Center, one of Ohio’s first programs performing multi-disciplinary evaluations of children with developmental disabilities and those born with risk factors. Two years later, I was one of the founders and the first medical director of the Janet Clemmons Early Childhood Intervention Center, one of Ohio’s first such facility for children from birth to kindergarten. Over 28 years ago, perhaps as the result of a midlife crisis and existential questions, I was motivated by needs that I had witnessed during travel in medically underserved areas of the world, to volunteer one to two months a year with medical teams serving short term medical missions in third world countries. Before long, I was forming and leading the teams. I have participated in such missions in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Eastern Europe. Since 1996, I have taken twice yearly teaching teams to Cuba, under a special program approved by both the U.S. government and the Ministry of Health of Cuba, to give conferences and participate in medical faculty exchanges. One such medical mission and faculty exchange trip in 2016 involved many colleagues from

our 1970 Johns Hopkins Medical School class. As I slow down in my professional activities, I have increased my commitment to medical missions as a means of retaining a purpose driven life of significance during “retirement.”

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