Born Barbara Arnold in 1943 in Towson, MD, she developed strong left-wing politics in her teens, moved north to college, then found her way to South Carolina where she worked with Students for a Democratic Society in anti-war efforts. She came out as a lesbian in New York City and in the early 1970’s helped found the St Mark’s Women’s Health Collective, the oldest lesbian clinic in the USA. It was only after these seminal accomplishments that Dr. Herbert went to medical school and started the phase of her life that we at MASAM were lucky to share.
Dr. Herbert received her MD with Honors from SUNY Stony Brook in 1980 at the age of 32, completed residency at the University of Pennsylvania and trained in Emergency Medicine at Boston City Hospital. She went on to work at BCH/Boston Medical Center, at Fenway Community Health Center, was medical director of St Elizabeth’s addiction treatment center, and worked in direct care of people suffering with the disease of addiction at New England Addiction Treatment Center in Brighton, Column Health, Lawrence General, and St. Luke’s. She was director of Addictions at the Commonwealth Care Alliance.
In her peripatetic addictions work, she gathered friends and devotees across the country, and recruited colleagues to work with us at MASAM. She was a one-person network.
We knew her as an active member and leader of MASAM. She was steadfast in her effective advocacy for the vulnerable, for access to excellent care, for the reduction of stigma of mental illness and addiction, and for the establishment of overdose prevention sites. She wrote and moved legislation through Mass Medical Society (MMS) committees and house of delegates and at the State House, having an outsized impact on the lives of our patients. In acknowledgement of her work, Dr Herbert received the 2021 Community Clinician of the Year Award for Middlesex District of the MMS and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the MMS (2022) awarded posthumously. She was a passionate participant in MASAM BOD activities for well over a decade, and served as President from the years 2015-2017. She participated in BOD zoom meetings from hospitals, rehabs, and during the last days of her life.
The MASAM Board of Directors and the Education Committee will select a member annually for the award. This award supports and acknowledges members of the Society who embody Dr Herbert’s fierce commitment to justice, intellectual rigor, the vulnerable and diversity. Barbara Arnold Herbert, former President of the Mass Society of Addiction Medicine died at the home she shared with her wife, Jean McGuire, on April 23, 2022.
Her impact lives on.
