It was a time of social upheaval and racial discontent. Those in poorer areas didn’t have good access to medical care certainly less than others elsewhere who were wealthier (and typically whiter). Neither did they have the same career opportunities.
In Pittsburgh in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Freedom House Ambulance Service presented a pioneering answer to both problems, training residents of the city’s underserved areas as paramedics to deliver elite prehospital care back to neglected neighborhoods like their own. And while it lasted less than a decade, it demonstrated that with the right resources and will, pipelines could be built to craft worthy candidates in need of a chance into dedicated caregivers that returned quality help to their communities.
An EMT helps a patient into an ambulance. Emergency medical services were pioneered by the Freedom House Ambulance Service in Pittsburgh in 1967. Granger Wootz/Getty Images
It may seem like a given that when Americans call for an ambulance, a trained paramedic will be on board the truck to begin administering emergency care. But as recently as 50 years ago, this was not the case ambulances were more like taxis to the nearest hospital. That all changed thanks to an ambulance crew recruited from a poverty-stricken black neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that operated between 1967 and 1975. They became the very first ambulance workers in the U.S. trained in advanced life support, setting the bar for generations of emergency medical technicians (EMTs).