लेखक: William Bronston MD

(Inside cover)Born and educated in Los Angeles, CA, William Bronston received his MD at the University of Southern CA School of Medicine, completed his internship in Pediatrics at Children”s Hospital of Los Angeles, and was a resident in psychiatry at Menningers School of Psychiatry in Topeka, Kansas.While a senior in Medical School, Bronston founded the Student Health Organization in 1964, a nationwide graduate health science student movement ded- icated to promoting universal health care as a human right, overcoming racism, sex- ism, war, poverty and physician elitism in the health system as the greatest challenges facing society. In 1968 after organizing the American Federation of State, County and Medical Employees mental health worker union in Topeka, Bronston moved to New York where he was a leader in a range of human rights and labor issues in the health care field, a career pursuit continued to the present day.Deeply concern about the plight of children with developmental special needs while in New York, Bronston spent 3 years as a staff physician in the infamous Willowbrook State School in Staten Island. As a public advocate he helped architect the 1971 Federal Class Action Law Suit against New York State for Constitutional violations of due process, right to treatment and decent care aimed to close and replace its state institutions with individualized family and community services. After a 2 year post doctoral fellowship at Syracuse University in Human Service policy, Bronston returned to California where he was appointed as the senior consultant to the Director of the CA State Health Department in the field of Developmental Disabilities, then served as medical consultant to the Secretary of Health and Welfare and finally as the Medical Director of the State Department of Rehabilitation where he served till retire- ment in 2006.Starting with the 1981, United Nations International Year of Disabled Persons, Bronston organized a 6-year, state-wide model, Project Interdependence, to integrate hundreds of multicultural teen youth, with and without disabilities, toward career futures in fields of science, sport, recreation and the arts. In 1997, he established the non profit Tower of Youth to promote digital media arts and technology as a system wide reform in the CA Education system, producing 37 bi-annual regional and North American-wide, teen youth film festivals.Returning to his central and life long devotion of advocating US and CA health care as a right, Bronston again became a major voice in the Physicians for a National Health Program, 30, 000 strong, nationwide, progressive physician organization where his harbinger experience in ending institutionalization in New York inexorably leads to his strategic engagement advancing Medicare for All, Single Payer Health Care in America.