It was a regular, normal day for Z. Michael Taweh and his dad back in 1985 ”“ if anything could be said to be normal in Lebanon back then.
“It was very difficult at that time,” Taweh said. Syria had invaded Lebanon 11 years earlier, “and there was a lot of tension among Christians and Muslims.” Then, without warning, even that tense and difficult normalcy was shattered. Taweh, only 17 years old, and his dad were kidnapped by the Syrian army. The elder Taweh understood the danger they were in, “but I don”™t think I realized how serious it was,” Michael said. “If you were caught by Muslims, you were likely to be killed.” And the same held true for Muslims captured by Christians, he said.
Taweh and his dad were held by the Syrians “for no other reason other than on our passport it said ”˜Christian,”™” he said. Not only that, but “I was wearing a cross on my chest. That gave it away.”
Then, 18 hours later and inexplicably, they were released, shaken but unharmed.
“That one event pushed my father to make a final decision to relocate,” moving Michael”™s mom, two older brothers and two younger sisters with him to Ohio, “where two of my father”™s sisters lived.”
The Taweh family remained in Ohio for about a year, then moved to New Britain in 1987, where Michael began attending Central Connecticut State University. “I did a double science major of biology and biochemistry,” he said. “I always wanted to be in the medical field since I was 11 or 12 years old, and had it in my mind of going to medical school. I still don”™t know why. My parents didn”™t even finish high school, so I didn”™t have a personal influence from somebody I knew.”
The only inkling of where that desire to be a doctor might have been seeded was from visits to the family doctor when he was a child. Back then, family doctors did everything from routine examinations to minor surgery, “a lot more than a doctor does now,” he said. “It was impressive that one doctor cared for all these problems.”
Taweh didn”™t know then, as he entered medical school, that he would do a lot more than any one doctor can do, that he would enlist more than 100 doctors and almost as many volunteers to provide free medical service, laboratory services and even prescriptions to uninsured patients ”“ some 2,000 of them at last count ”“ in the most unlikely of places ”“ upscale, white collar, middle-class Newtown.
Love at first sight
Taweh attended St. George University School of Medicine in the Granada and did his medical residency at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, becoming licensed as a medical doctor in 1999. He joined a Newtown physician in primary-care medicine, moving to the town of 26,000 residents with his wife, Jocelyne, in 2000. “I met her in Lebanon,” Taweh said. “At the time, my parents had gone home for a year and my mother had surgery on her knee and Jocelyne was a nurse taking care of her. It was pretty much love at first sight.”
Taweh struck up a phone and mail conversation with her, and then returned to Lebanon a year later in 1998 to marry her. “We started a family soon after that, and about five months after we got married, Jocelyne was pregnant” with their first son, Kevin.
Taweh”™s medical career blossomed. After two years at the Newtown practice, he moved to a group practice in Danbury and then in 2005 began his own Advanced Internal Medicine practice within walking distance of Danbury Hospital ”“ where he had become a staff physician five years earlier ”“ and a nursing home. “When I started my single practice, I changed focus a little bit from internal medicine and primary care to include geriatrics.”
But he may not be alone much longer. “Very few physicians are in solo practice now because the cost becomes overwhelming,” he said. “Unfortunately, the cost of health care is so high that solo practices are finding it very difficult, not to compete, but to maintain a high level of health-care delivery when the overhead is so high.”
Taweh is considering looking for another physician to share his space. “You can lower costs a little. You pay the same rent if you”™re by yourself or with someone else, so it makes good financial sense to be a partner.” Not only that, but “I think I”™m getting to the point with young children at home to have another provider sharing space with me,” Taweh said. “For one thing, it would give me a chance to have some time off.”
One thing he needs more time for is the free clinic he and his wife founded in Newtown in August 2003, and named for their son, Kevin. “Everything was fine,” Taweh said of that terrible and shattering day a year earlier. “It was a regular, normal day.” Taweh”™s sentences fade into a painfully quiet shorthand. Kevin was playing on a swing. Somehow, he became entangled with the swing”™s rope. “He was 3 years and 2 months old.”
Serious medical problems
Taweh took two months off to grieve with his wife and “decide where I wanted to go from here.” Near the end of those two months, the priest from St. Rose Church in Newtown approached Taweh and suggested that he could do something in Kevin”™s memory. “I realize, looking back, that he wanted me to do something to give me hope.” The priest gathered some people together to talk with Taweh and his wife, and two meetings later “we started leaning toward establishing a free medical clinic.”
The small group began collecting data from the state, the town and other sources to see if Newtown in fact needed a free clinic. “What we found was very astonishing,” Taweh said. “We found that even back in 2002 about 800 families in Newtown were not insured, and that typically translates to 3,500 adults with no insurance.”
“When we first opened, we were seeing about five or six patients,” Taweh said. “Very soon and much to everybody”™s surprise, within weeks we started seeing many, many more patients” as word spread and people realized Kevin”™s Community Center (www.kevinscommunitycenter.org) was a free clinic. And those patients weren”™t just complaining about the flu or a cold. “Most were coming with multiple and very serious medical problems like cancer or diabetes,” he said. “So very soon after we started, our focus had to shift to care on a continuing basis, and we had to provide a network of referrals” to specialists.
Since then Taweh and his volunteers have created a network of more than 100 specialists in metro Danbury that provide patients with free medical care, free laboratory services at Danbury Hospital, even free X-rays, ultrasounds and other radiological services.
The clinic sees about 25 or 30 patients during the four hours each Wednesday afternoon it is open, and “about 65 percent of our patients are middle income people making between 100 percent and 300 percent above the federal poverty level,” Taweh said. “Our assumption was that the clinic would help the poor, but most of our patients are a family or four or five making $60,000 to $70,000 a year who cannot afford insurance. For most of them, it”™s a choice of paying the mortgage or the health care policy.”
About half of the patients are self-employed, but “we”™re seeing more people who are working for companies that are not offering health insurance or have a very high deductible up to $5,000 or $7,500 ”“ which is really no insurance. We consider them underinsured.”
Later this year Kevin”™s Community Center will move from its 850-square-foot space to 7,000 square feet in the former state psychiatric hospital, Fairfield Hills, which was turned over to the town. “Our plan is to expand services to be able to have the clinic open two or three times a week,” and offer community meeting rooms and a small medical library. “I never imagined even in my wildest dreams it would be this broad or comprehensive,” Taweh said.
