New Jersey Family Physician Named 2007 Family Physician of the Year

WASHINGTON – The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) today named Steven J. Levin, M.D., the 2007 Family Physician of the Year at the opening ceremony of its Annual Scientific Assembly. The Family Physician of the Year award honors an outstanding American family physician who provides patients with compassionate and comprehensive care, and serves as a role model professionally and personally to his or her community, other health professionals, and residents and medical students.

As medical director and sole physician at St. John’s Health Center in New Brunswick, N.J., Levin has committed his life to providing medical care to underserved populations. St. John’s Health Center is a community health center created and funded by Catholic Charities that provides health care for underserved and indigent populations. Levin was the clinic’s first full-time physician, a position he has held for 18 years. Seventy to 80 percent of the clinic’s patients are uninsured and have low income. Approximately 70 percent are Latino and few speak English. Levin and his staff, all of whom speak Spanish, conduct about half of all patient visits in Spanish. St. John’s also provides care and case management for about 100 patients with HIV or AIDS. Aside from the complexities of treating patients with HIV, Levin said, “Caring for these patients is consistent with the mission of the clinic and my own desire to provide health care to people who are left out of the health care system.”

Levin is an associate professor at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, New Brunswick (UMDNJ). He mentors family medicine residents and students who come to St. John’s for family medicine training. He has a third-year student working with him consistently during his/her family medicine clerkship.

Levin’s dedication to his local community inspired a group of his students to form the nationally recognized Homeless and Indigent Population Health Outreach Project, or HIPHOP, in 1992.

Through the program, students provide community outreach, health promotion, preventive education and clinical services to underserved populations in New Brunswick and Middlesex County. HIPHOP went on to be recognized as one of the Thousand Points of Light by the George H.W. Bush administration. Levin serves as chief faculty advisor for the program.

More recently, Levin helped another group of students start the Promise Clinic, which provides medical care to those attending Elijah’s Promise Soup Kitchen, where low-income and homeless individuals and families in central New Jersey can get a hot meal. Faculty, including Levin and his physician assistant, take turns supervising the Promise Clinic students one night a week.

Levin has received many awards and accolades, including New Jersey Academy of Family Physicians Family Physician of the Year and the University Excellence Award, for “Distinguished Service and Outreach to the External Community” from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

Dr. Levin completed his family medicine residency at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, S.C., and his medical degree from Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Ga. He received his undergraduate degree from Brown University in Providence, R.I.