Longtime Newton Pediatrician and Passionate Advocate for Better Mental Health Screening, age 92
During a roughly 50-year span, from 1964 to 2014, generations of children growing up in Newton, Massachusetts, and its neighboring Boston suburbs made regular visits to see Dr. Howard King as their trusted and, for many, beloved pediatrician.
Across those five decades, from his first-floor office at the Newton-Wellesley Hospital Medical Building, Dr. King did what pediatricians always do. He measured height and weight and examined eyes and ears. He monitored heartbeats, checked reflexes, prescribed relief for routine maladies, and dutifully filled out camp forms.
But during that span, as any patient or parent of Dr. King’s office knew, he did much more.
Dr. King listened, for as long as it took, to detect the unseen drivers of discord in the family unit, whether or not health insurers reimbursed him for the extra time required for mental health screening. In an era when compensation to physicians became measured in minutes and procedure codes, Howard King became an iconoclast.
Writing in 1997 about the emergence of ‘managed care’ in his 45th reunion report to his Harvard classmates from the Class of 1952, Dr. King lamented, “This ‘complicated beast’ has changed the medical landscape with implications for everyone, from society to the individual patient.” This caution was a constant theme throughout Dr. King’s long career.
Laying out his logic in that alumni essay, as he would in countless other papers, publications and pamphlets,
Dr. King continued, “In the short run, however, it exacts a toll on everyone including the physician. With its growing pains, it makes more demands on all of us than ever before. Longer hours are needed to do it right.”
He invested the required hours and, to the end, deeply loved the work he did.
Dr. Howard King, who in 2016 received the Job Lewis Smith Award for outstanding career achievement from the American Academy of Pediatrics, was 92 and in failing health when he died on June 4 in hospice care at his home in Waban, Massachusetts. His beloved wife of 65 years, Phyllis (Weitz) King, was at his side when he passed away.
Along with Phyllis, Dr. King is survived by his sons Richard of Great Barrington and Joshua of New York City, their wives Amanda and Amy, grandchildren Penny, William, Sophie, Fred, Toby, and Annabelle, and was predeceased by a great-grandson, Sam, who died at birth.
Howard Stanley King was born on April 2, 1931, in Boston to Edwin H. King, a certified public accountant who emigrated to the United States from Ukraine, and Ida (Edelstein) King, a homemaker. The family’s home in Roxbury also included Howard’s older sister, the late Muriel (King) Wilker, and was deeply affected by their father’s chronic illness. Howard’s early trajectory toward medicine was, he often wrote, a response to his own uncertain childhood.
Howard graduated from Boston Latin School and cum laude from Harvard, and received his M.D. from Boston University in 1956. His first assignments were an internship at Massachusetts Memorial Hospitals from 1956 to 1957 and a residency in pediatrics at Mass General from 1957 to 1959. Howard and Phyllis were married in Newton in 1958.
The young couple soon embarked to Germany, where Howard served from 1959 to 1961 as a captain in the U.S. Air Force, caring for children at Wiesbaden Air Base while air crews patrolled the front lines of the Cold War. While stationed in Europe, Howard and Phyllis traveled extensively before the arrival of their first son, Rick, in 1960. Josh was born in 1965.
Dr. King returned from military service as chief resident in pediatrics at Boston City Hospital before settling in Waban with Phyllis and their two boys. From there, he entered private practice for the rest of his career at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, a short walk from home.
While home and work were in close proximity, Dr. King journeyed far intellectually for a deeper understanding of his profession and his role in it. He earned a Master’s in public health from Harvard in 1973 and, throughout his career, he wrote voluminously, striving to share his knowledge with peers and teach the next generation of healthcare providers.
Among Dr. King’s many works was a guidebook he authored called Routine Screening for Domestic Violence in Pediatric Practice. The book became the basis for a groundbreaking website and course for practitioners called Children’s Emotional Health Link, or CEHL.
The CEHL program had two parts, one designed to empower parents to seek help for emotional problems in their children and the other to help pediatricians increase their competence in making psychosocial assessments of children and their families.
Dr. King labored to earn institutional support and alliances for the programs he and his colleagues designed to fill gaps left by the inexorable march of medical economics. He could often be found in his den late at night, sitting at his computer, writing another grant proposal.
His efforts resulted in generous funding for his novel teaching curriculum from a variety of organizations and philanthropies. Among them were the Sidney R. Baer Jr. Foundation, the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, the Alden Trust, the Kenneth Schwartz Center, the Newton Public Schools, and the Aetna Health Plan.
In addition to his recognition by the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. King received, among many other honors, the Newton-Wellesley Hospital’s Locke Award for Compassionate Health Care. This was followed by the 2005 Clinician of the Year Award by the Massachusetts Medical Society. Each honor offered Dr. King one more chance to advocate for his cause.
Dr. King earned the abiding respect of his community. He received the Newton Mayor’s Medallion Award as “a champion for psychologically sophisticated and compassionate care” and, approaching retirement from private practice in 2014, the Newton-Wellesley Hospital established the annual Howard King Award for Outstanding Compassionate Health Care.
In Dr. King’s 50th Harvard Reunion bulletin, published in 2002, his classmates were asked to finish three statements, including one which began, “I would like to be remembered…”
Dr. King’s written response to that question provided a through-line to his life: “‘He searched for opportunities with his patients and colleagues to help them discover how they could become agents for change: with families, where they worked, or in their communities.’ Every one of us has the capacity to make a difference.”
In that, Howard King was immensely successful.
Services at Temple Emanuel, 385 Ward St., Newton on Thursday, June 8 at 1:00 pm. Burial will follow at Mishkan Tefila Memorial Park, 2609 Centre St., West Roxbury.
Memorial Observance Thursday from 5-7 pm, Friday from 4-7 pm and Sunday from 3-7 pm at his late residence.
In lieu of flowers, remembrances may be made to the Lurie Center for Autism, www.giving.massgeneral.org/donate/lurie-center/ or the Newton-Wellesley Hospital, www.nwh.org/development-office/development-office