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Open without restrictions.
Digital access copies for born-digital records are available onsite in Archives & Special Collections.
The Wessler papers document four decades of health care activism in New York City and State, from the early 1970s to the early 2010s, with a few items pre-dating that period. They include correspondence, reports (both published and unpublished), committee and task force minutes, organization newsletters, legal documents, newspaper and magazine clippings,photographs, and such ephemera as flyers, leaflets, and buttons. There are also 540MB of electronic materials; some of these are born-digital records, while a smaller part consists of scans of documents that exist in paper form in the collection.
History and Biography
Judy Wessler, health care activist, educator, and policy maker, was born to Jack and Manya Wessler in Chicago where her father was in medical school. She was raised in New York City and was educated at Boston University (B.A., psychology, 1964) and Columbia University (Master of Public Health, 1986). Since the early 1970s she has been involved in health care activism, education, and policy making in New York City and New York State. Wessler has been deeply involved in such issues as the role of public hospitals, Medicaid and managed care, hospital closings, women’s and children’s health, national health insurance, and the provision of health care to the underserved communities of New York City.
Wessler has worked in health care advocacy and education for organizations such as MFY Legal Services (1972-1979), Community Action for Legal Services (CALS, 1979-1988), and the Community Service Society (1988-1990). She served in the Manhattan Borough President’s Office during the administration of Ruth Messinger (1990-1991), and later worked for the Children’s Defense Fund (1992-1995), and the Commission on the Public’s Health System (1995-2013). She has also consulted extensively.
She has been the author, co-author, or editor of several publications including Health Advocates Manual (1987), Medicaid in New York: Perceptions and Realities (1995), Uninsured Children in New York (1995), and The Human Cost of Efficiency: HHC in the Era of Budget Reductions (1998).
As of the writing of this finding aid (2018), Wessler continues to be active in health care reform efforts in New York City and State.
Organization
The original order of the papers was not apparent upon their arrival at Archives & Special Collections and many of the folders were unlabeled. In order to expedite the opening of the papers, no attempt has been made to recreate series. Folders lacking titles were rarely supplied with new ones, usually only when they held a single publication. Many untitled folders hold extremely heterogeneous materials, both as to types of items and dates. Researchers should be aware that material on one topic may be found in widely separated boxes.
The box list that follows not only includes folder titles (under “Folders”) but attempts to show what topics may be found in the untitled folders (under “Topics”).
The list of folders for born-digital materials will be found at the end of the folder list. The titles are those given by Wessler.
The Wessler papers document four decades of health care activism in New York City and State, from the early 1970s to the early 2010s, with a few items pre-dating that period. They include correspondence, reports (both published and unpublished), committee and task force minutes, organization newsletters, legal documents, newspaper and magazine clippings, and such ephemera as flyers, leaflets, and buttons. There are also 540MB of electronic materials; some of these are born-digital records, while a smaller part consists of scans of documents that exist in paper form in the collection.
Wessler was involved in most of the major health care controversies in New York during this period but the papers are particularly strong in documenting community organizing; the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs the municipal hospital system; managed care; Medicaid; children’s and women’s health; unequal access to health care; and racial discrimination in health care delivery.
Organizations for which there is substantial material include the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation; New York City Coalition for Community Health; New York City Health Systems Agency; Commission on the Public’s Health System; and New York State Dept. of Health.
Wessler collected over several decades an enormous number of publications and newspaper and magazine clippings on a wide variety of health care issues; while the focus tends to be on New York these materials usually reflect concerns that were national in scope.
Subject Headings and Related Records
Administrative Information
Gift of Judy Wessler, 2014 (Accession #2014.012).
The transfer of the papers to acid-free folders and the creation of a preliminary folder list was done by Thomas Leiner, 2017-2018. Additional work on the folder list and the writing of the finding aid’s front matter was done by Stephen E. Novak, 2018.