Dr. Louis DiNicola is Medical Director at Gifford Medical Center in Randolf VT. Here is his story in his own words from an email he sent to our classmates:
I have had the honor of working as a pediatrician in Randolph, Vermont for the last 26+ years. I have been able to work with many amazing parents, children and colleagues. I have also been able to teach medical students. Because Vermont is very small, I have had the opportunity to use my experience and training to help to make Vermont a better place for children. I was able to work with the legislature to write laws abolishing corporal punishment in the schools, to establish mandatory kindergarten for all children and most importantly, to improve and to rewrite laws concerning child abuse. With some very energetic colleagues, we started the first child abuse team in the state of Vermont in 1976. We then went on to help to start others; there are now 18. Ten years ago I worked to bring the NAIMS/AIDS quilt to Randolph. This was a challenge because the quilt had not been shown in such a small setting up to that time. For an entire month The Chandler Art Gallery in Randolph displayed sections of the quilt and we were able to bring over 6,000 children to see the quilt over that month from up to 50 miles away. Over the past 6 years I have been working on a project developing medical homes for children with special health care needs in rural settings. Many children with special health care needs are developmentally challenged. Often, in rural settings, these children receive inadequate care. I was lucky enough to receive two National Honors as a result of this work from the Academy of Pediatrics. Our video about this work is being used by the Academy for teaching purposes. Recently two magazines, Exceptional Parenting and JAMA, published articles about our practice in Randolph. As a collaborative project working with parents, our success was the result of the work of many great parents of these special children.