Seth Franz can vividly recall his first foray into the world of volunteerism. He was a pre-teen at the time and helped distribute food to the homeless in a Salvation Army van. That experience made a positive impression and provided him a lifetime vantage point for service and contribution.

As a young professional, Franz attended the typical networking events. Everyone showed up in office attire and passed out business cards. Franz liked the initial interaction among peers who wanted to climb the leadership ladder. But he also wanted more—deeper connections, opportunities to bond and give back to the community.

Returning to his volunteerism roots, Franz envisioned something more informal, more fun. In February 2014, he founded Volunteering Untapped (VU) to create the experience he was looking for. What began as a movement of 10 has grown to more than 100 participants showing up to contribute to their community.

“This program was created to give young professionals the opportunity for inspiring, rewarding, and impactful experiences that will help forge a passion for future volunteering—both with our organization and on their own,” says Franz, who by day is co-founder and director of operations for Hone Health, an online telemedicine clinic. “Volunteering Untapped was born out of the realization that young professionals in Baltimore want to give back to their community, but simply don’t know the best way to get involved. We solve that problem.”

Here’s how it works. On the second Saturday of each month, volunteers assemble to help out a different nonprofit in Baltimore. That way, says Franz, participants can better understand Baltimore’s nonprofit landscape and the problems the city faces. Ideally, they will use the experience to launch themselves into deeper engagement with the city. VU has grown to be a reliable resource for Baltimore and its nonprofits with beneficiaries including Kennedy Krieger Institute, the Baltimore Tree Trust, and the Franciscan Center. After the volunteers spend part of the day working, they head out to a neighborhood bar or restaurant for an after-party.

“Seth is a special person who has poured his heart and soul into VU,” says longtime volunteer Taylor Smith. “And it really shows in the program.”

In just shy of 10 years, VU has built a community of more than 6,000 volunteers of all ages in Baltimore who have performed more than 35,000 hours of community service. The organization also has expanded its reach with new chapters opening in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Austin, Texas.

“Through our events, Volunteering Untapped has engaged thousands of people in Baltimore to do everything from building homes to planting trees to feeding the homeless,” says Franz. “For many of these people, we are the first volunteer experience they’ve had in a long time or ever. We accomplish many things through our events, and the most important is serving as a springboard that launches our volunteers into a long life of civic engagement. Our events are a pebble dropped into the pond of each volunteer and we take pride in watching the ripples.”

And while the benefits to the nonprofits they serve are obvious, it does lead to an intriguing question—who benefits more, the charitable organization or the volunteers themselves?

Research is showing that it’s overwhelmingly both.

According to Psychology Today, participants often feel a greater sense of community, contribution, camaraderie, and a sense of purpose through volunteering. Volunteers are happier and healthier than non-volunteers. In fact, later in life, volunteering is even more beneficial for one’s health than exercising and eating well. Older people who volunteer remain physically functional longer, have more robust psychological well-being, and live longer. However, older people who volunteer are almost always people who volunteered earlier in life. Health and longevity gains from volunteering come from establishing meaningful volunteer roles before you retire and continuing to volunteer once you arrive in your post-retirement years.

The very nature of volunteering means choosing to work without being paid for it. As a result, volunteers are most successful when they spend their time on issues they feel strongly about. If you are greatly concerned about the treatment and well-being of animals, for example, volunteering at an animal shelter will help you address a social problem that is meaningful to you.

“If you aren’t currently volunteering—three out of four of us aren’t—there are many online resources to help you find an opportunity,” says Dawn Carr, MGS, PhD, who studies factors that bolster older adults’ ability to remain healthy and active as long as possible. “Committing even as little as one hour a week can have a profound benefit on your own life, and the organizations that rely on such help will be able to thrive….You’ll get more back than you ever imagined.”

Franz has seen firsthand the benefits of volunteering and the bonds it can create. He says he’s had volunteers who have met and married or found new jobs as a result of their service. Other volunteers also attest to the personal benefit and value of giving back.

Mental health advocate Melony Hill benefited from the resources provided from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and offered to be a volunteer. She has since been trained to present on behalf of the organization, sharing her story at schools and the like throughout the region and advocating for mental health awareness on Capitol Hill.

“I had such an amazing experience with NAMI that I said, ‘I have to get more involved,’” says Hill. “It’s a place where I can be of value to the organization and to my people [who struggle with mental health].”

Hill has since started her own company called Stronger Than My Struggles and published nine books to share her story and help end the stigma attached to mental illness.

“I have witnessed firsthand individuals approaching our volunteers and telling them that by sharing their story they saved that individual’s life,” says Kerry Graves, executive director of NAMI Metropolitan Baltimore. That sort of feedback is pretty common, she adds. Graves says that, from what she’s heard, NAMI volunteers are directly responsible for more students in schools seeking counseling services, more police officers meeting community members in crisis with empathy rather than handcuffs, more patients in inpatient settings feeling hopeful about the road ahead, and more family members learning how to support their struggling loved ones.

“Our volunteers are changing lives, changing communities,” says Graves. “And that is priceless.”

Gilda Gordon, a retiree, is another volunteer who agrees she’s not sure who benefits the most—the organizations she serves or herself. Gordon volunteers at Weekend Backpacks, a group that bags food to be delivered to schools for children in need. But it’s her work at Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital (MWPH) that truly fulfills her. She and a friend volunteer twice a week at MWPH where they are “cuddlers” who spend time with ill and distressed infants. Touch is therapeautic for us all, no matter our age. This service helps when parents aren’t always physically available to constantly be with their newborn at such a vulnerable time.

“It’s such a wonderful experience,” Gordon says. “I think we enjoy it more than [the infants] do. When you pick them up and they look at you, you know you’re giving them the life they need. I’d love to take all those babies home, but my husband says no,” she says with a laugh.

It’s no surprise that Gordon and others get a lift out of their volunteer experience. WebMD states that for the 26 percent of adults in the United States who volunteer, one of the biggest benefits is that the more you do it, the happier you become. In fact, studies show that people who start with lower levels of well-being may get an even bigger boost in happiness from volunteering.

Franz sees this joy play out routinely at VU and invites any and all to sign up to volunteer through his organization.

“We love Baltimore,” Franz says, “and we exist to help create a better Baltimore. We think that the best way to accomplish that is to build the best volunteer experience possible. When the volunteers are taken care of, they take care of the nonprofits we serve. When [they’re] inspired by the impact they are having, they want to come back to volunteer with us or with our partner nonprofits, and they are more deeply connected to Baltimore.”

Phyllis C. Meyerhoff was just four years old when her parents took her to a quiet estate in Mt. Washington named Happy Hills Convalescent Home, dropped her off, and drove away. It was 1938 and Meyerhoff, like many children of her era, had been diagnosed with rheumatic fever, first by her pediatrician, then by Helen Taussig, the renowned physician-in-chief of the cardiac clinic at the Harriet Lane Home for Invalid Children at Hopkins. It was Taussig’s recommendation that Meyerhoff go to Happy Hills for what was then known as a rest cure.

“At the time, there were no antibiotics available, which would have corrected [rheumatic fever], so the only known cure for it was complete bed rest,” says Meyerhoff, now 88.

Happy Hills would be Meyerhoff’s home for the next 10 months. To reduce the threat of germs, parent visits were discouraged. Meyerhoff only saw her parents and brother during a few designated hours each Sunday.

“They put me in a crib in a big room with other children,” Meyerhoff recalls. “Of course, there was no television, so they would play the radio—soap operas and, on Saturdays, Let’s Pretend and The Shadow—and we would have a teacher come in during the week to work with us on basic reading and arithmetic.”

Despite the long weeks without her parents and living confined to her bed for most of the day, Meyerhoff remembers the convalescent home as “a loving environment,” where the staff recognized that the children in its care were away from the lives and family they knew. Eventually, Meyerhoff made a complete recovery.  As an adult, she learned that her successful recuperation at Happy Hills was made possible by the efforts of a determined young woman, Hortense Kahn Eliasberg, who founded the convalescent home in 1922. One hundred years later, Happy Hills is still serving pediatric patients, and is now known as Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital (MWPH).

Today, MWPH functions as a modern pediatric hospital, yet for much of its history, it’s been one of Baltimore’s best kept secrets, likely because it helps only the most complex pediatric cases. Patients are mostly referred by pediatricians and often transfer from larger acute hospitals to MWPH to receive additional medical care. It is the place most parents don’t know exists—until they need it.

While MWPH has an expansive outpatient reach, much of the inpatient population is comprised of “NICU graduates,” fragile newborns who would never have survived in Eliasberg’s day but who today can safely return home with a little extra time and care. Other inpatients are at MWPH for rehabilitation from traumatic accidents or illness, where the goal is to get each patient to their maximum level of independence. MWPH also has specialty clinics, including those for feeding disorders, sleep medicine, diabetes, and respiratory care.

While MWPH has evolved over the years to care for everything from the effects of lead poisoning to pediatric HIV, in the 1920s it was rheumatic fever that was the leading cause of death in individuals between five and 20 years of age. The disease was caused by untreated group-A strep infections and could significantly, evenly fatally, damage the heart. Childhood in the age before advances like penicillin, vaccines, and Vitamin D in milk was a fraught time, with the looming threat of many health problems for which there were few if any treatments. Even hospitals weren’t as safe as they are now.

“In health care at the turn of the last century, there weren’t private rooms, there were huge wards where children and adults stayed head to toe and when one person sneezed or coughed, it wasn’t long before that went around the whole ward,” says Sheldon Stein, the recently retired president and CEO of MWPH.

But things were often worse at home, and many illnesses and injuries were exacerbated by inadequate care when young patients were released from the hospital.

“When children went home, the conditions were atrocious—poor sanitation, no hot water, infestations of rodents, no healthy meals to eat, in the winter there may have been no heat,” he continues. “Children who left the hospital would soon decline. They needed convalescent care to get stronger to withstand the conditions at home.”

Poor home conditions could be a death sentence for some, especially those living in squalid city poverty. Hortense Kahn Eliasberg, the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Moses S. Kahn, made remedying this her life’s work. Remarkable for the time, she had the credentials to make it happen. Eliasberg grew up in Reservoir Hill and attended the Girls’ Latin School in Roland Park. She went on to graduate from Goucher College and earned her master’s degree from the Graduate School of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University in an era when less than 40 percent of college degrees in the nation were awarded to women.

“Her father had some interests similar to this, but I really believe it was her master’s thesis that propelled her in this direction,” says Ann Eliasberg Betten, Eliasberg’s granddaughter and a member of MWPH’s Foundation Board. While researching her thesis, Standards of Care for Convalescent Children, Eliasberg spent time at another convalescent facility in New York, the Campbell Cottages, where Betten explains Eliasberg was moved by what she saw, particularly the discrepancy between those who could afford intermediate recovery care and those who could not.

Eliasberg’s mission was spelled out simply in her thesis: “Convalescent treatment consists essentially of regular hours for sleep, play, work, rest and meals; a well-balanced diet; supervised exercise; and a therapeutic occupation with continuing schooling and some beginning vocational guidance.” Yet Baltimore was one of the few major cities at the time with no convalescent hospital for pediatrics. Eliasberg calculated that at least 200 beds for young people were needed.

Eliasberg didn’t waste any time going after the heaviest hitters in Baltimore to make her home a reality. She brought on board Dr. William Welch, who was then chief physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Hygiene and Public Health and a medical luminary of national and international renown. Though she was just 22 years old, Eliasberg managed to gather other pre-eminent Baltimoreans with deep pockets—no doubt leveraging connections brought on by Welch and her own husband, financier Louis Eliasberg—to fund the project.

In 1922, Happy Hills opened in its first location on Poplar Hill Road in northern Baltimore City. The brick structure (now a private home) could accommodate 20 patients. Notably, children were admitted regardless of their family’s ability to pay. Stein notes that in the ’20s, a stay at Happy Hills was between $1.25 and $1.50 a day. If funds ran short, Eliasberg would press her wealthy friends into donating $25 or so, a sizeable sum in Depression-era dollars.

“To my knowledge, there’s never been a patient turned away because of an inability to pay,” says Stein. Patients stayed as long as necessary, which was often lengthy given the needs of the population. In a report presented to the board of trustees in 1923, the average stay was stated to be just over 10 weeks.

Though less than 10 miles from the center of the city, Happy Hills was a world away from the smog, congestion, and poor sanitation of downtown Baltimore. Here, children could play and rest in the fresh air and eat healthful meals. The lack of visitors meant they weren’t exposed to additional viruses that could deplete their fragile constitutions. The rest cure was so successful, it wasn’t long before Happy Hills had a waiting list. Once again, Eliasberg used her fundraising savvy to help secure the purchase of the estate of George Whitelock on West Rodgers Avenue. Today’s MWPH sits not far from that original location.

In a Baltimore Sun photograph from the formal opening of the new location in 1930, Eliasberg cuts a glamorous figure in a fur-trimmed coat and cloche hat. Yet by all accounts she was humble, choosing only ever to be the secretary of the board of trustees as a way of allowing other important people to have more prominent board seats. Despite years of working at Happy Hills, she never drew a paycheck.

Eliasberg was also indefatigable in her philanthropic outreach. She represented Baltimore at the Maryland League of Women Voters’ conference on internationalism in Washington, D.C., chaired the Women’s Committee of the Baltimore Roundtable of the National Conference on Christians and Jews, and served on the executive committee of the Baltimore Community Chest, just to name a few of her charities.

Yet much like MWPH, until recently Eliasberg’s legacy has been one of the area’s best-kept secrets. Betten says she has learned a lot about her grandmother through the celebrations of MWPH’s 100th anniversary, including the publication of a book co-authored by her uncle, Richard A. Eliasberg, with Meg Fairfax Fielding. Her grandmother died in 1949, at the age of 49 after a long illness, and Betten believes it was too painful for the family to speak of her after that loss.

“She must have been quite energetic and enthusiastic—infectious—to get these people behind her,” says Betten. “How else did a woman who was just 22 years old get the support of Dr. Welch? At 22, I would’ve cowered before such a person.”

As an adult, Phyllis Meyerhoff had an opportunity to meet Eliasberg at one of the Eliasbergs’ annual New Year’s Day open house parties. “She was a very elegant, lovely person,” says Meyerhoff, a benefactor and MWPH honorary trustee (the Phyllis C. Meyerhoff Center for Pediatric and Adolescent Rehabilitation was dedicated in 2021). “I think it saved my life to have a convalescent home to go to,” Meyerhoff continues, “and I was able to tell [Eliasberg] about my experience and how much I appreciated what she had done.”

Eliasberg’s portrait hangs in the main entry of MWPH. If she were alive today, she might recognize the landscape. The current MWPH sits gently on its wooded site, an architectural decision made with intention, as the buildings have always been designed to feel more like a home than a hospital. And MWPH still operates as a home away from home for many patients who need extra care beyond what can be given in a traditional hospital setting.

Dawn Acab’s granddaughter, Hailey Withers, 14, has received care at MWPH since she was three. Withers had an accident at age two that left her paralyzed from the neck down and on a ventilator. Being at MWPH was life-changing for both Acab, who is her granddaughter’s caregiver, and Withers. Previously, Withers’ appointments were spread over many hospitals and physicians; it was exhausting for Acab to handle full-time work, Withers’ care needs, and disparate health care appointments and specialists. At MWPH everything was in one place. The impact on Withers’ health was remarkable.

“Doctors had told us she would be in bed for the rest of her life, that she would never talk or eat,” says Acab. “Once we got to Mt. Washington, I don’t think I ever heard anyone say she wouldn’t be able to do something or we’re going to baby her,” says Acab. “It’s always been ‘Let’s figure out a way for her to do it,’ and, ‘If you fall down, we’ll pick you up and make you better.’”

At MWPH, Withers receives occupational and physical therapy, obtains adaptive equipment, and has access to a psychologist as well as oversight by her physician, Virginia Keane. Withers has gained limited arm movement, enough to feed and dress herself. She recently celebrated a major victory—the removal of her tracheotomy. Her grandmother says that’s a big step toward normalcy for Withers, who is now in ninth grade at Green Street Academy in Baltimore City, where she’s in conversation with the basketball coach about possibly becoming the equipment manager.

“It’s not good that children are sick or suffering trauma,” says Stein. “We all want hospitals like Mt. Washington to go away, but since the need hasn’t gone away, I think Hortense would be proud that the mission continues.”

Stein started work at MWPH in 1995 and became president and CEO in 2002. In some ways, the anniversary year is also an homage to his 20-plus-year tenure, which concluded when he retired in November of this year. Stein has witnessed massive changes in health care that have affected MWPH, most notably the expansion of out-patient medicine.

Where Eliasberg was advocating for children to spend weeks and even months in recuperative care, modern medicine relies heavily on outpatient clinics. MWPH is projected to conduct approximately 60,000 outpatient visits in fiscal year 2023. The hospital has expanded its footprint with locations in Prince George’s and Harford counties. It was also during Stein’s tenure that MWPH obtained its unique, dual ownership. In 2006 MWPH became a joint affiliate of Johns Hopkins Medicine and the University of Maryland Medical System.

Behavioral health needs have exploded during Stein’s tenure. MWPH helps children on the autism spectrum and those with learning differences, but also, and most disheartening for Stein, children dealing with the effects of trauma like gun violence. “When I started, we had nine psychologists and now we have almost 40,” he says. “If I could hire 40 more I would, and their schedules would all be booked.”

The name may have changed, but MWPH is still a happy place on a hill. Its story and history mirror the story and history of pediatric health care, from an era before antibiotics, Medicaid, and proper sanitation, all the way through to today’s post-COVID-19 needs.

“In the next 100 years we’ll continue to grow and survive,” says Stein. “We’ve re-engineered decade after decade to take care of children. What used to be rheumatic fever and lead poisoning and HIV, today is prematurity, diabetes, and trauma. The hospital has always been nimble and able to redefine itself as children’s needs change.”

Eliasberg outlined in her thesis how she believed standardized convalescent care could stop the creation of “the half-cured,” those “patients who flounder aimlessly about clinics for weeks and months endeavoring to regain health.”

While today’s medical complexities exceed what would have been seen in her day, Eliasberg’s call to action is as sound today as it was a century ago.

“It is not by a charm of magic nor by some act of sleight-of-hand, or the course of nature,” she wrote, “but by definite and intelligent care that a patient is able speedily to return to sound health after illness.”

As our pandemic-fueled dentophobia begins to fade, good practitioners are suddenly a hot commodity.

BY GRACE HEBRON AND REBECCA KIRKMAN
EDITED BY KEN IGLEHART
PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTOPHER MYERS
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALICIA CORMAN

Okay, so you watched the Johns Hopkins positivity graph touch the sky over the past 18 months and figured you’d skip a dentist appointment or two. But you may pay for that—in the form of tooth decay, or even worse. Which is why the results of our annual top dentist peer survey are more valuable than ever.

Once again, we asked the area’s doctors of dental science to name their most accomplished colleagues in each of the eight D.D.S. specialties.

And drumroll: Here are our picks for the dentists with the most peer referrals, divided into different regions and specialties.

Still feeling a little uncertain about going back under the drill? We also have a feature about all the impressive new health-safety procedures the profession has introduced to make you feel comfortable with going back. We’re not saying you’re going to look forward to your next appointment, but at least you can return with confidence.

OUR ADVISER

MEET SOME OF THIS YEAR’S TOP DENTISTS

Browse the full Top Dentists list, here.

Strains of a rare virus that has been blamed so far for killing 10 children and sickening dozens of others in New Jersey pediatric-care facilities have Baltimore doctors on alert for an outbreak here.

According to New Jersey state health authorities, there have been 27 cases of the adenovirus infection at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation center in Haskell, New Jersey, where the affected children had severely compromised immune systems. One death was a young adult.

The state also confirmed to the Associated Press four adenovirus cases among pediatric patients at New Jersey’s Voorhees Pediatric Facility, just across the river from Philadelphia, but preliminary tests suggest it’s a different strain of the virus.

The department said it’s working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to monitor the illness and announced earlier this week that infection control teams were being sent to New Jersey’s four long-term pediatric centers to help with training.

At Baltimore hospitals, doctors are watching carefully for the spread of the virus, says pediatric infectious disease specialist Dr. James Campbell, who is also a professor of pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

“We have been following the events of this institutional adenovirus outbreak and our hearts go out to the patients, families, and staff [in New Jersey],” says Campbell. “Adenoviruses are a common cause of respiratory diseases and may also cause gastrointestinal illness. The illnesses they cause range from very mild to life-threatening. More common manifestations are things like the common cold, sore throat with pink eye, and ear infections. In some people, they can cause pneumonia, heart infections, or other serious diseases.”

Particularly at risk are those with compromised health, he says. “These more serious problems tend to occur in people with underlying medical problems or problems with fighting off infections. Institutional epidemics of pneumonia can occur in dormitories, military barracks, and other places, like chronic-care facilities.”

Campbell says adenoviruses are spread by “respiratory droplets,” just like other viruses that cause colds and pneumonias. “That means that you get them when people sneeze or cough near you or you shake hands or touch surfaces where others were sneezing or coughing,” he says. “The best way to reduce your risk of infection is by hand washing.”

At Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital, infection prevention coordinator and R.N. Erica Jones echoed the increased danger such viruses pose to the very young, medically fragile, or hospitalized children.

Jones says that, besides hand washing (use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer when soap and water aren’t available), there are other steps people can take to avoid spreading viruses. “Avoid close contact with other people, especially infants or children who may be immune-compromised, stay home from work and school when you are sick to help prevent spreading illness, and cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when coughing or sneezing,” she says.

As someone who deals with very sick kids every day, Jones tries to empower parents to speak up for the safety of their children.

“Parents often tell me they are uncomfortable speaking up when strangers approach their infant or child wanting to touch their hands or belongings,” she says. “A well-intended gesture can prove harmful if germs are passed along. I also let parents know that when their child goes home, it is okay to remind family members and friends not to visit when sick and to wash their hands.”

Hospitals take other steps, too, to avoid spreading illnesses, says Dr. Aaron Milstone,
a Johns Hopkins Hospital epidemiologist and associate professor of pediatrics at Hopkins School of Medicine. “In a health-care setting, we also require our staff to wear personal protective equipment, such as gloves and gowns, when treating patients with contagious infectious diseases,” he says.

And they’re always on the lookout for such viruses: “Adenoviruses are common and can be detected with available tests, but at Johns Hopkins’ five hospitals in Maryland and Washington, D.C., we are seeing a low and typical number of cases.”