Dr. Kalman J. Mann, of Jerusalem, was today named director general of the Hadassah Medical Organization in Israel before 1,500 medical chairmen and metropolitan leaders of Hadassah. He is the fourth Medical Director to hold the post since Hadassah began its medical program in Palestine in 1913.
At the same time, Dr. Mann made the first public announcement of a radically new community health program, which Hadassah will inaugurate in Israel and which will involve drastic revision in the training of Israel’s physicians. The program was evolved after a long series of discussions between Dr. Mann and the Medical Advisory Board of the Hebrew University and Hadassah and the National Board of Hadassah.
The training of new physicians in Israel, Dr. Mann said, will stress the social medicine orientation. The curriculum of the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School will be so revised, he said, that the medical student will first have to study community health problems before he is even admitted to the diagnostic and curative phases of his training.
Dr. Mann pointed out that the new program will be “keyed to community health needs rather than to the individual. Emphasis will be on maintenance of health rather than on diagnosis and cure of disease. The new program “was particularly suited to Israel where enforced austerity could conceivably jeopardize health standards, ” Dr. Mann said.
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