FROM THE DIRECTOR

NHSC's Winning Combination: Warmth and Wisdom

When asked what he would want in a doctor, John Steinbeck once wrote, "Perhaps, more than anything else-a friend with specialized knowledge."

We believe that any of the National Health Service Corps (NHSC) clinicians whose success stories are featured here would have easily lived up to Steinbeck's requirement. For not only do these clinicians demonstrate knowledge and skill in their various fields, but they also share a common drive to bring compassionate care to those who need it most.

America's everyday Health Care Heroes represent the interdisciplinary reach of those who bring primary health care to needy communities. They are diverse in their backgrounds and disciplines, but have in common the tradition of commitment and action found in all members of the NHSC. That tradition has always been geared to building a relationship of trust, as well as friendship with patients and communities.

Our clinicians share the same high purpose-to make a much-appreciated difference in the health, and lives, of Americans in underserved rural, frontier, and urban communities. With enthusiasm, the NHSC's Health Care Heroes embrace and seek understanding of all cultures, even when it means sharing in another tradition or learning a new language.

The clinicians featured in these pages represent the prevailing spirit of NHSC members who begin their service as strangers in a needy community and are accepted, in short order, as trusted friends by the power of their respectful and open-minded approach to quality service.

Director, Division of the National Health Service Corps