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Eye-opening

Dr. Chuck Garven has lived in Cleveland for 60 years. The retired family physician went on a ride-along in March. He wanted to learn more about Cleveland’s neighborhoods because he’s on a committee that is advising the Sisters of Charity system’s leadership during the transition of its St. Vincent Charity Medical Center campus to a community health and social service center.

During the ride-along he met a young mother who said she felt many clinicians with patients from Central don’t really care about the people there and that they were not committed to the community.

He says facilitators of his ride-along told him the stereotype of the heartless and unfeeling clinician is common among people who don’t trust the health care system. Garven recognizes that he has on occasion relied on stereotypes in making assumptions about people unfamiliar to him. He says the ride-alongs enabled an honest exchange about implicit bias — a step toward moving beyond stereotypes.

“It’s an opportunity for folks in the community to get to know each other, whatever their title, and build connections and relationships,” he says.

as a dumping ground. Prostitutes and drug dealers set up shop.

Still, Anderson wasn’t giving up on her house or neighborhood without a fight. She challenged her mortgage servicer and had $20,000 in fees and charges refunded to her. She found a neighborhood bank that agreed to assume her mortgage and convert it to a fixed rate with a monthly payment the Andersons could afford.

She guided neighbors to take similar steps to keep their homes. She testified at community meetings about the dangers of predatory subprime loans. At a 2007 presidential campaign forum she told candidate Barack Obama about the racial injustice inherent in predatory lending. She later was featured in a documentary about the foreclosure crisis, “Cleveland Versus Wall Street.”

Anderson started a neighborhood betterment club that did cleanup work, created a neighborhood garden, cut lawns at abandoned properties and organized street parties. The club set up surveillance cameras for use in monitoring and reporting drug dealers. Unarmed neighborhood men patrolled the area. Anderson helped folks from other neighborhoods launch similar neighborhood protections. For her efforts she was named to People magazine’s “Heroes Among Us.”