ChesterCountyMedicineSummer2020 - 6

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PR E S I DE NT'S M E SSAG E

SUMMER
2020
BY DR. BRUCE A. COLLEY
PRESIDENT OF CHESTER COUNTY MEDICAL SOCIETY

or those who remember the summer of 1968, it is easy to find similarities to our
recent national experience. There was the Vietnam war, assassinations, cities
burning due to the opposition to the war and race related turmoil. Emotions and

anxiety were heightened by the pending election. Now with a deadly virus disrupting
the economy and routine daily life on every level, it creates worries, tension, despair and
even anger and irrational actions. For the past four months we have lived in a community
so disrupted on every level we hardly recognize it. Finally with the COVID19 " curve"
flattening and a taste of a "return to normalcy" as President Harding once described a
former era in United States history, we then on an infamous day, saw the tragic flaw of
racial injustice well-up from some evil polluted reservoir. What can happen next, we all
apprehensively wonder?
While for most, we have, with great good fortune, never seen or been a party to

D r. B r u c e A . C o l l e y

racism, but it exists. I know what we all ponder to ourselves, "How can I contribute to
stopping the plague of racism?" Initially, at least we can examine this topic a bit more
publicly.

To contact Dr. Colley
send email to:
bacolley828@gmail.com

While proclamations, laws and pronouncements have their place, as physicians, our
imperative is to erase racism one patient at a time. It is our individual actions that will
make this change from the current status quo to a new reality of citizen equality. Our
oaths as physicians that we have all sworn to for the past hundred years is our guide.
Simply stated, be it the Hippocratic or Osteopathic, is, take care of your patients well,
ALL of them.
I am proud of the Chester County Medical Society, as we speak, along with all our
health care colleagues, daily with a quiet but unfailing voice that is committed to all
aspects of heath of the citizens of Chester County. Preventative health, child and elder
abuse, vaccination campaigns, opioid and alcohol addiction, pre-natal care, and the list
goes on.
A commitment to the health of every Chester County community is our mission, I
can assure you on this we are not silent.

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