These blog posts are a compilation of Irwin’s op-eds, publications, media interviews, and a variety of other features.
William wouldn't show his eyes.
The guarded, gaunt 10-year-old gazed at the floor of Dr. Irwin Redlener’s mobile pediatric unit parked in his Brooklyn neighborhood, answering the pediatrician's questions in monosyllables.
Then Redlener, who dreamed up the mobile unit — a big blue bus — with his wife, Karen, and singer-songwriter Paul Simon to bring health care to the inner-city poor, asked William what he calls “the big question”: What do you want to be when you grow up?
In 1986, as New York City reeled from a crack epidemic and runaway violence, Paul Simon, the musician, and Irwin Redlener, a doctor, paid a visit to one of the city’s notorious welfare hotels, the Martinique in Midtown Manhattan.
The two had been working together to raise money and awareness for children in Africa, as part of the “We Are the World” campaign, when it occurred to Mr. Simon that perhaps they could also address urgent needs closer to home.
