"Still Worthy" — Alister Martin on Fathers, Patients, and the Next NYC Health Crisis

Dr. Alister Martin is the 45th Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene — an emergency physician, Harvard graduate, and former White House fellow who's been on the job for two months. In 72 days, roughly 450,000 New Yorkers lose their Essential Plan coverage. HR.1 hits Medicaid in January. The CDC has been gutted, the federal government has pulled out of the WHO, and childhood vaccination rates in New York are slipping. The World Cup arrives in June. Martin's answer on all of it is the same: New York is not waiting for Washington.But this conversation is also about who gets to be treated as worthy. The kid from Jackson Heights whose mother — a Haitian immigrant and public school teacher — couldn't afford to stay in the city, and moved them to Neptune, New Jersey. The 11-year-old who overheard someone ask where he'd go when his mother died of cancer, and decided then to become a doctor. The 16-year-old with a third-degree black belt who tried to stop a friend from getting jumped and got kicked out of high school for it. The 20-year-old who met his absent father for the first time, and the 25-year-old who got a Facebook message from a brother he didn't know he had telling him that father — also a Harvard graduate — was dying of cancer. The emergency physician who carries all of it into the exam room.Book recommendationAnother Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn — NYPL catalog.