Dr. Andrew Swiderski, a pediatrician in Ossining, spent time as a health care worker in Africa and later, after becoming a physician, worked at inner city clinics. He speaks passionately about Open Door’s comprehensive services, it’s one-stop shopping that allows for “warm handoffs” from primary care to mental health, dental, optometry and podiatric services. “Open Door is a really welcoming place,” he says. “We provide an ‘open door’ for everyone, particularly those who need it the most, in their own language, offering the kind of preventive care that prevents the complications of disease. Open Door is a safety net for the many who today, more than ever, need affordable access to quality care.”
As a medical student working in a clinic at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, Andrew Swiderski found himself drawn to the photo of a young woman that sat on the desk of Judith Yoxthimer, who was in charge of billing at the clinic. The two soon became friendly and swapped stories: Mrs. Yoxthimer of the girl in the photo, her daughter, Amy, who was serving with the Peace Corps in places like Ecuador and Thailand; Dr. Swiderski of his time spent in Africa in the 1980s and early ‘90s.
“She called Amy and told her, ‘I just met your future husband,’ he laughs. “She answered, as you would expect, ‘Oh, Mom.” However, when he met Amy for the first time, picking her up at the airport after she finished her last mission, he was smitten.
So much so that he changed his post-graduate plans and chose to spend his pediatric residency in Rochester. They married and he worked in health clinics in Baltimore and Washington D.C, while Amy completed her Physician Assistant studies at George Washington University.
Dr. Swiderski worked with the Peace Corps in Mauritania, serving as a maternal child health volunteer at a time when a continent-wide draught led to the deaths from malnutrition of thousands, including many children. These experiences changed his life’s aspirations – he had been considering a career in diplomacy. Instead, he returned home him to earn a degree in international health from Columbia University. With an added license as a Registered Dietitian, he soon returned to Africa with the International Rescue Committee. Here, he found himself stationed in the midst of a civil war in what is now the Republic of South Sudan.
“We worked in a small, very remote village in a tent camp without water or electricity,” he recalls. “There was no currency and so we paid local workers in the village in sugar and bars of soap. It was a pretty chaotic situation.”
Unsafe to travel by car because of the bombings and land mines, he routinely flew from village to village in a small plane to provide vaccines and food. When his organization published a report accusing soldiers in the nearby rebel army of pilfering food earmarked for famine areas, he became persona non grata and feared for his own safety. This was a natural conclusion having seen the army torture and execute their foes.
He soon left for his next assignment in Malawi, a relatively peaceful country, before moving on to Mozambique, which was also experiencing civil war, working as a consultant to the minister of health. Here, he oversaw a project that modernized the country’s primitive health information system, adding a fluency in Portuguese – the country’s native tongue – to his previous knowledge of Spanish and French (and Polish, which his parents as immigrants having fled war-torn Poland during World War II, spoke at home). At 33, a decade older than most of his classmates, he enrolled in medical school.
Amy, meanwhile, as an undergraduate at the State University of New York at Oswego, helped found a program for AIDS education through the American Red Cross of Oswego County. She later worked as an advocate for individuals infected with HIV/AIDS and their families. She served in the Peace Corps in Thailand and in Ecuador as a community health educator, concentrating on service on behalf of rural populations and issues concerning women.
In Ecuador, she organized courses and conducted training for rural health promoters and women’s groups that taught health issues and organic gardening techniques. She also organized and facilitated a national HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases workshop for nationals and volunteers.
In Thailand, she developed household level surveys and assisted villagers in implementing HIV/AIDS interventions. She again organized and trained rural health promoters and provided follow-up education sessions about AIDS and reproductive health issues in Hill tribe villages. She also helped organize an international conference on HIV/AIDS among indigenous people, held in Venezuela.
Now they both work at Open Door – Dr. Swiderski as a pediatrician in Ossining, and Amy as a PA, specializing in women’s sexual and reproductive health issues, first in Brewster and now in Port Chester. Married for 25 years, they are the parents of Ben, a freshman at the University of Virginia, and Sarah, a high school junior.
