DID YOU KNOW? for January 3 – 16 2023: 

DID YOU KNOW…Freedom House Ambulance Service, formed in 1967 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was the first emergency medical service in the United States staffed by paramedics who had received medical training. They served the predominantly black Hill District of Pittsburgh, and the majority of the staff were African-American. Formed with partial funding from President Johnson’s War on Poverty, Freedom House Ambulance Service established new national and international standards in emergency medical care. They operated until 1975 when the city took over providing emergency ambulance service.

In an agreement with the City of Pittsburgh, staff from Freedom House Ambulance Service were supposed to maintain their jobs and ambulance teams with the new city agency, however that didn’t happen. Within the first year fifty-per-cent of the former Freedom House Ambulance staffers were no longer employed with the city's emergency services.

Learn more….

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/20/1124008613/how-working-class-black-men-in-pittsburgh-pioneered-emergency-medicine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_House_Ambulance_Service