(soft music) - Steve Berman was a force of nature.

- First and foremost, he had to be tireless.

- A doctor on a mission to fix things.

- He was a machine of ideas.

- Steve was a pragmatic idealist - Maybe the most important thing that Steve did was to show people what was possible.

- Steve Berman and Elaine always had a kind of a glow in the back of my mind They're special people.

- Steve worked tirelessly to make things better for kids.

- It was always all children.

- He was kind of America's pediatrician.

You know, he believed that the arc of history was bending towards justice and that it was his job to grab the end of it and pull as hard as he could.

(soft music) - "Steve Berman, an American Pediatrician," has been made possible by a grant from the American Academy of Pediatrics, an organization of 67,000 pediatricians committed to the optimal physical, mental, and social health and well-being for all infants, children, adolescents, and young adults.

(soft music) - I like blue.

Blue is my favorite color.

- Blue's your favorite color.

It's one of mine, too.

You know what?

Once we finish listening, I will let you put on the stethoscope and try it out if you want.

How's that sound?

- You realize that although it's very important to know what you're doing as a physician and to do the best you can in terms of technical provision of medical care, it's even more important in many cases to get to know patients as people and to regard them as people and treat them as people.

- Should we try this again?

- [Narrator] I think in pediatrics there's a certain joy... - Yeah.

You wanna listen to my heart?

What do you think?

Good?

- [Narrator] It's the joy of watching a child grow and development.

- (laughs) Should we listen to your heart?

Beep, beep.

What do you think?

- [Narrator] And it's a joy of watching a family be excited about that.

In pediatrics, it's all about grace.

It's all about next year is better and more interesting than this year in many cases.

Pediatricians are optimistic people.

Not that many pediatricians go beyond the examination room and the family to get involved in that broader arena to advocate for children at the legislature.

And Steve Berman was a pediatrician who not only understood the importance of child health policy, but actually got out of the exam room, got into the political process and got into the broader community.

Steve had that patience, that enthusiasm, that willingness to put himself out there and say, guys, children need your help.

Come along.

I'll show you how to do it.

- [Narrator] Very seldom are those skills and accomplishments embodied in one individual.

That individual was Steve Berman - Steve was so good at that.

He was a very smart doctor and a very good pediatrician.

If anything, he was even better at connecting with patients at a personal level and providing the kind of care, caring in addition to care that's so important to a relationship and to a patient's sense of well-being.

- Steve would always do what was right for the child in front of him.

He walked into a room that the child in front of him was the only person he was focused on.

- I was very lucky to share team with him on Tuesdays.

And I will always remember that the first thing he would do would always be to talk to the child, not to the parent, to make sure that he was at eye level with the child and make sure that the child was comfortable with him.

- Well, Steve, from my perspective, was always a clinician with enormous drive to help his patients, not just in the clinic.

He would see their problems and he would do something about it.

(light music) - If you think about people starting medical school, most doctors or doctors-to-be think about being a practitioner, maybe think about doing research...

But I don't think most young people at that stage in their career are really thinking about, how can I improve healthcare for all the children that live in the State of Colorado?

How can I improve healthcare for all the children that live in the United States of America?

Steve did that.

- Steve and Elaine were an enormously energetic, attractive couple that clearly adored one another and shared a passion for the same kinds of problems and the same kinds of solutions.

They were separately effective, but together they were extraordinarily effective.

- Well, if you know Elaine, and I did, you know Steve right away because they were an unbelievable team working on issues of health and education.

- I was really focused on child care and early child learning, and Steve Berman and Elaine were just a part of the movement always.

- [Reporter] The governor is the winner of the Child Health Advocate Award.

Each year, the American Academy of Pediatrics honors one state or local official in the entire country.

- [Narrator] They were on your team.

You didn't ever have to question their intentions, their goals.

They were with you.

- The bow tie was Steve's trademark, and I don't know how the bow tie came to be.

- [Narrator] Steve told me how to tie my first bow tie, and the reason that I carry a bow tie with me is because Steve Berman.

- The way I understand it is the bow tie, there are a lot of pediatricians that wear bow ties, and it's very obvious why they wear bow ties if they're taking care of little boys.

Oh, you don't know?

The reason they wear bow ties is because little boys, when you take their diapers off, pee.

And the pee, so you don't want it to go all over your tie, so you wear a bow tie so it's less likely to get peed on.

- (laughs) There's actually a study showing that, you know, yes, bow ties get less contaminated than long ties, but by three days they are the same.

Hand washing is the best.

(laughs) - I'm not sure Steve or Elaine ever rest.

They're always thinking about opportunities for making our space a better place for kids, and whether it be education or health care, or where those two worlds meet in particular.

- They shared a passion for public policy and for systems-level solutions to systems-level problems.

Elaine saw it from her perspective.

- Ms. Berman, let's talk a little bit about an overview of DPS.

- We are really, really making sure that every child is reading and accelerating their reading skills in the classroom.

- Steve saw it from his.

- Their parents haven't been educated or taught or informed about how important it is in those early years to talk with and encourage their child.

- [Narrator] Frequently, they overlapped.

- Steve and I really cared about the same issues.

I mean, he cared about health.

I cared about education.

We both cared about the intersection between them.

I think Steve and I were both very passionate about social justice and wanting to do our very small part in improving the lives of children, improving the community that we lived in.

(soft music) Steve and I met because he was working in Fort Lupton at the migrant health clinic, and I was also doing a rotation there.

(soft music) They were taking care of migrant workers because at that point there were a lot of migrant workers that would travel throughout the country and stop and help with harvest and then move on to the next place.

And every job I had, I always had to use my Spanish, so I got to go house to house with a consejeros, which basically mean the people who give advice and counsel, and I would help with translation from English to Spanish, Spanish to English.

Somebody who worked there told Steve, I have this girl I'd like you to meet.

(upbeat music) My mother always told me, you know, choose a mate where you have enough in common because there are gonna be enough other challenges in a marriage that if you have a foundation and things in common, it's gonna help a lot.

That translates to marry a nice Jewish boy.

Steve was beyond a nice Jewish boy because he was a nice Jewish doctor.

My mother and father were thrilled that I was gonna marry a nice Jewish doctor, but I had a very rebellious relationship with my mother, and because my mother liked Steve so much, I decided I couldn't marry him.

(upbeat music) Obviously I got over that, but that's how it all started.

Critical time for Steve, really shaping his career, was when we went to Cali, Colombia.

I said to Steve, if you're gonna stick with me, we're gonna go to Latin America, we're gonna live there for a year or two, and he said, fine, I just got to finish my chief residency, and then we'll go.

The International Center for Medical Research, which is part of Tulane University, was located in Cali, Colombia.

And that's where he really began his research around pneumonia, infectious disease... We learned so much there.

Their healthcare was at a totally different level than what we were used to back in the States.

Steve worked at neighborhood health centers, and he would go from neighborhood health center to neighborhood health center.

He took care of children that were in the hospital, but he didn't have the equipment to adequately really take care of these kids, which was very frustrating for him.

He was seeing a particular child.

Now you've got to get the picture of, you've got the hospital, the city hospital, and right on the other side of the street are all these mortuaries with caskets.

And they put the caskets outside, so you get to choose your casket, but they put it outside the mortuary, and it's one right after the other.

So of course you see the hospital, you see the mortuaries, and you assume that anybody that goes into a hospital is gonna die.

(light music) He realized that immunizations were not being given to all kids.

And when Steve realized that there was no immunization program going on, he basically went to the director and said, we need to do this.

We need to be a role model.

We need to provide immunizations.

And the director basically said, you don't know, you're not from our culture, you don't understand, but we don't have the money, and they're not expecting us to do this, so why are you stirring up trouble?

Because these kids need immunizations, and if you're not gonna pay for it, I'll pay for it.

And we went house to house, and we gave them immunizations.

And that was his really first exposure to real deep poverty.

And I think it was that experience that really kind of catapulted his long-term interest throughout his entire career working internationally, and especially in Latin America.

(soft music) - [Reporter] With the possibility of a grave infantile paralysis epidemic, health authorities attack germ carriers on a city-wide front.

With war-discovered DDT and special sprayers, sections of the city are literally fogged with the insecticide in the fight to stop the spread of polio.

Every suspected spot is sprayed.

- [Narrator] I was petrified of polio as a child.

I had friends that were paralyzed and who died.

I was exposed to iron lungs.

- [Reporter] And in the parks, precautions are taken to prevent gatherings of youngsters.

Literally tons of DDT are used on this dread disease that attacks our young.

Again, war, destructive and terrible, contributes one of its discoveries to save life.

- As a public health intervention for children, there's nothing more important than immunizations.

If you don't know what the immunization status of your population is, and you don't know where the pockets of poor immunizations are, you're not gonna be able to devote resources to the solution of those problems.

Immunization rates in Colorado historically had been quite low.

Rural rates were particularly low.

But the problem was we didn't have good data.

And Steve knew that without data, you cannot change anything.

- It was hard to understand how could such an educated state, which we were and are, and an affluent state, how could a state like that have these problems keep surfacing?

And, you know, is there a pattern to this?

Well, the pattern turned out to be we were flying blind.

I mean, we had nothing to guide us.

- He gathered a coalition of people.

He got a large grant from the CDC to be really the first to look at rural immunization rates and to create a collaboration where rural and urban rates could be combined so that we could actually monitor what was going on.

- And a huge boost in the effort to immunize children in rural parts of our state.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is awarding Colorado with $5 million to immunize children in 43 rural counties.

One-year-old Ashley Welch is one of the children who developed a serious illness because she was not immunized at birth.

- There was a lot of resistance to that, it's important to say, because people say, well, it's none of your business whether my child is immunized or not.

Well, it's actually, it's a matter of public concern because unless a certain percentage of children are immunized, it increases the susceptibility of all children to those diseases.

That's where epidemics arise in populations of poorly immunized children.

- What he had done was actually create the first comprehensive immunization information system, or what's now called immunization registry, that combines all immunizations for a region or a state.

- Steve and Elaine not only had the data in hand, had the information in hand, but they had solutions, suggested solutions in hand as well, and a passionate commitment to implementation.

(light music) - One of the projects that Steve and I worked on together back in the '80s was the Colorado Children's Campaign.

And the whole premise was to show data that demonstrates the lack of health care for children... - Hi, I'm Barbara O'Brien from the Colorado Children's Campaign, and you're about to hear from some state legislators who believe that the future of children really is in your hands.

- It was 1990 when Elaine and Steve persuaded me to come over to the Children's Campaign, and they forgot to mention that they only had three months' payroll in the bank, and that it was operating on fumes.

And so I was thinking, great, I love public policy, I'll get into this, and then I realized, oh no, I have to do some serious fundraising.

And the best way I found of raising sort of emergency money to keep going was telling people about the immediate health problems that were being ignored by our state leadership.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] The very unique role of the Colorado Children's Campaign was to take data that had been collected that could be used to persuade legislators about how to improve specific policies like immunizations.

And the Children's Campaign was really the first voice for children in the state.

- Today the Children's Campaign is the only organization that trains people in how to go talk to their legislators at the state capitol so they're not intimidated or overwhelmed.

(people chattering) (people cheering) - Steps over here in the north entrance.

Let's keep going.

Now it's time for your election.

Thank you.

- [Narrator] They're a very real human presence at the capitol instead of lobbyists.

- Oh yeah.

Come on.

Come with me.

Come peek.

Let's go look.

(people chattering) So they're not taking any cards right now because they're on second reading, which is when they, the votes are a little bit more important.

- So how do we know if something that we were interested in isn't a second or third... - Yeah, I'll send you the link.. - [Narrator] I think for them, they're experiencing what it's like to have a voice about something important.

And they begin feeling that advocating is a really important thing to d - But that's a lot of the people in here who are lobbyists because this is the lobby, that's what they are called, are in here tracking all the tim And that's how we know.

So... - [Narrator] When you go to the legislature, you're talking about the million children in Colorado and you're making a difference.

- Senator Faith Winter here, there's some other folks from our Speak Up for Kids Day, they just wanna talk about some health priorities, if that's okay.

- Great to see you all... - Frankly, without that support, we're seeing those kids in prison, we're seeing those kids being housed, we are seeing those kids in emergency rooms after overdoses.

So this is preventative, preventative care that keeps these kids safe and it just, it wouldn't be possible.

- Yeah.

- Without the... - [Narrator] Steve Berman was with the Children's Campaign at its very beginning.

- Everyone's in- - No, I'll call you.

Now, I'll call you.

- One, two, three.

Great job.

- [Narrator] I know he felt like a proud father.

- We need to take care of the patients and we need to make sure that you guys... - And that exists today, 30, 35 years later.

And in my humble opinion, I think it's one of the most effective nonprofits in the State of Colorado.

Just about every piece of legislation they get behind gets passed.

They're considered nonpartisan.

So I think Steve and I were very, very proud of our involvement with that.

- Healthcare!

- Yeah!

- All right.

- Thank you.

- Thank you, Senator Jodeh.

Thank you so much.

- Thanks for everything you guys do.

- Thank you.

- Thanks.

(soft music) (children playing) - There used to be this huge gap of those who don't qualify for Medicaid, their parents, they're either unemployed or they don't have a job that provides insurance or the insurance from their job is way too expensive and they cannot get it.

So the number of under or uninsured children was extremely large.

- I do remember the gap, the gap of people who earn too much to be on Medicaid, not enough to really get insurance otherwise.

And we were trying to fill that gap.

- Because Steve thought broadly about child health, one of the first things he did was to advocate at the Colorado legislature for health insurance coverage for children.

And that led to one of the very first efforts nationally to provide health insurance specifically for children and attracted a great deal of national attention.

- Steve would tell this the first time he went to the state joint budget committee to try and get a trial program funded...

They also heard a presentation by the people who sold pets who wanted more inspectors so they could guarantee their customers that the puppies were healthy.

And the legislature voted to fund more health inspectors instead of child health care.

Frankly, it just pissed me off.

I don't know if I should be using that word, but I got angry like that.

It is stupid and it's not fair.

And that was sort of the beginning of my interest in fighting.

(upbeat music) In the first years of fighting for CHIP, we had to explain why this was not a slippery slope toward communism.

And then we had to deal with, well, do we really want to provide health insurance to gay or lesbian parents?

We had huge fights over that.

Back then, there was no email, no texting.

We had to do editing on hard paper and meet each other early in the morning and trade papers and then go back to our day jobs and then back to the next evening editing again and then meeting again for coffee and trading.

It was very laborious.

He was just always thinking about, well, will this be persuasive or will this not be and what do we need to sell our case, and then edit.

We discovered it's still helpful to have a stick in your carrot and stick strategy.

And we would find out, you know, here are the leaders of this committee.

Who do you know who might be able to influence them?

So we learned things like the mother of the Speaker of the House was a kindergarten teacher and had no shame about calling up the kindergarten teacher mother and saying, your son is gonna vote against this thing we want to do for kids.

How do you feel and could you help us?

And there's nothing like a mother on your side.

Finally we got to the point where we can say, look, you're already spending this money in emergency rooms.

Why not try putting a million dollars over into subsidized health insurance for working parents and see what happens?

The results financially were so clear... - I signed that bill.

It was a very important movement of getting coverage for kids that needed it.

And Steve Berman was a practitioner.

He knew how bad that need was.

And he was a very strong advocate.

- It was an amazing, amazingly important innovation.

- If we were to look at all the pieces of legislation that Steve worked on, he worked on seat belts, he worked on immunizations, he worked on expanding Medicaid, he worked on paying pediatricians more adequately because they were getting underpaid and it was a disincentive to serve low-income kids.

I mean, if you just look at those pieces of legislation, he's had an enormous impact on the lives of children.

- In many ways, it costs rural physicians more to practice.

If half of the prescriptions that were written for the three expensive antibiotics were written for a cheaper amoxicillin, the state would have saved about $400,000 a year.

- If something he considered to be unjust, he'd write an op-ed piece and he would submit it.

And he almost always got them accepted, probably because there weren't a lot of docs writing similar types of op-eds.

He didn't get the results he wanted in terms of better health care for kids or better reimbursement for primary care docs, he would go at it and at it and at it.

He was very persistent.

(soft music) (light music) - He really had a special bond to Latin America.

He knew Spanish very well.

He could communicate with people there.

He was received as somebody that cared for the Latin American society, in a sense.

(people speaking in foreign language) - Dr. Edwin Asturias came to Denver, to Anschutz, as a young physician in a very poor area of Guatemala, in southwest Guatemala.

(Edwin speaking in foreign language) - I came to Colorado and Children's Hospital because I wanted to be trained in the best possible way to come back and sort of give to the population that I was sort of committed to.

(people speaking in foreign language) - [Narrator] He had a relationship with two brothers in Guatemala that were the owners of a banana plantation.

And together they actually built a clinic.

- To build that project, you've got to imagine that you start from an idea.

But going from there to sort of developing the clinic that we developed has taken almost a decade.

And over the years we have built up from there slowly by partnering with the community.

- What the Bolanos and what Steve and Edwin were able to do was pretty miraculous.

- It's a very remote area.

It is a very remote area still.

And at one point in time when we started this 15, 16 years ago, it was really not much there.

There was no health services, there was no education, there was no roads, there was no water, no security.

It is a combination of a series of small towns.

The project that we have with the University of Colorado serves 21 of those communities and about 50,000-52,000 people from those communities.

(people chattering in foreign language) (dog barking) (people speaking in foreign language) - [Narrator] Some students, medical students and dental students and pharmacy students and nursing students that go down to Guatemala and are just so excited to be able to do a rotation down there and to see what life in a very rural community is like.

(people chattering) - All right.

I know that I will learn a lot.

I know that I am lucky to get to participate in an experience like this.

(soft music) I think that is what is so special about this clinic is that it's a...

It's a team.

It's not just us coming by ourselves to a place that we aren't familiar with and a culture that we're not familiar with.

We're working with people that live there and work there and understand the community.

(people chattering in foreign language) - Yeah, I know, it's so funny.

(laughs) Hi.

- I think that they are human just like all of us.

(people chattering) They experience love and hardship and life in a way that all of us do.

And I think that there is a tendency to distance ourselves from people who maybe speak a different language or come from a slightly different cultural background.

Having spent a significant amount of time in Central America, I really learned how similar we all are.

(people chattering) (people laughing) - My expectation is for me to really just learn from those living and working there.

- I think understanding that I don't know everything and that there is so much for me to learn as well is really what this is about.

Especially when going to another country, I think it's really, really important to work with the people that live there.

(people chattering in foreign language) - When we looked at our workers, right, and their families and, you know, the health indexes, it was really astonishing and we had to do something.

So I think that was the beginning, change that.

And it was a 10-year program and now we're in the 16th year, right?

And things have changed for the better.

(speaking in foreign language) - Through the School of Public Health and through Steve's connections with Guatemala, I provide a free service of tele-dermatology to Guatemala for both kids and adults.

(speaking in foreign language) I provide tele-dermatology services here for free.

This is in the freestanding hospital that Steve helped to build.

(speaking in foreign language) We can provide a very comparable care to seeing the patient in person.

We provide a diagnosis, a treatment plan, and we actually also have follow-up.

So the patients that are initially evaluated and treated will come back for follow-up to you, and we'll get those pictures to obviously assess, respond to treatment, see if we need to change management plans.

(speaking in foreign language) - If something that you can say of Steve's legacy is that he saw the world as one and that he saw the world as something that we need to go and help without any boundaries.

(soft music) - I was fresh out of residency in the first few months of being a practicing physician and a faculty member, and Steve showed up on my schedule one day in clinic for an exam.

It was interesting.

Steve introduced himself as Steve Berman and sort of alluded to, you know...

I asked him what he did.

He said he was a pediatrician.

And I think obliquely he sort of said, I've got a couple of other roles or something like that.

I mean, it was, he didn't tell me he was Steve Berman.

Yeah, you know, I never asked Steve why he picked me, but he could have had the most senior sought-after physician and he picked a rookie.

- When I think of Steve as a mentor, I definitely think of the word connector.

- And was a great sponsor and door opener.

You know, I would get four sentences into it and he'd be like, oh, you need to talk to... And then he would make that introductory email or the phone call.

- Steve played a significant role in my career development, starting when I was an intern and the beginning of the relationship.

But really it was a mentorship and a friendship that ran the gamut of my career.

- Such a long-term perspective, which is often lost in this building.

And I appreciate that.

- It started with developing a flavor for health policy, how you could impact children beyond the exam room.

One of the secret sauces that Steve had as a mentor was his ability to connect you and your interests with the people that could help you promote the change that you were looking for.

- Steve, I think, firmly believe and lived out the idea that you are your patient's voice when they don't have one.

And that we use our privilege as physicians to make the world better for, I'm gonna say our patients, that sounds paternalistic, but to Steve, anybody in need was one of his patients.

(soft music) - EB or epidermolysis bullosa is, I think, the most unfair disease that exists in this world.

It's often referred to as the worst disease you've never heard of.

There are proteins missing in the skin that are the anchors that essentially hold your skin to your body.

Think about wounds across your entire body as a two-year-old or a three-year-old.

And then you think about the families, moms and dads and siblings who help support these children and who are, have to bear witness to this.

It is, it is awful.

- Steve never shied away from dealing with difficult medical patients, and he started what turned out to be one of the first in the United States clinics for kids that have this disease.

The disease is always fatal.

So it was really tough for Steve because he would take care of them, knowing what their future had in store for them.

We would go to funerals, more than one.

We have to remember that pediatricians, people that go into pediatrics, have a certain level of kindness and humanity.

- Steve wouldn't shy away from children and really difficult situations like the end of a child's life.

He would be there in the hospital room with the family, standing next to that bedside.

And on so many occasions, I watched him, this big, tall presence.

You just see his frame bend over the bed and he would kiss a child goodbye.

I think that it's so important, even though it's so hard, to embrace those types of situations and feel the emotion and be human.

And that's kind of what he always modeled.

- Steve was sick for about two and a half months from beginning to end.

When he was first admitted and he was diagnosed, he had B lymphoma.

But over the course of the two months, they did a PET scan, he ended up with T-cell lymphoma.

And it's very, very unusual to have both B-cell and T-cell lymphoma.

- The cancer changed its character to a much more aggressive and serious disorder that was not responsive to therapy.

(soft music) By early January, it was clear that this cancer had spread widely.

- He had been through a lot by the time they diagnosed him with T-cell.

The oncologists who were kind of looking after him basically said if he was younger and healthier, he could fight this.

But he's not younger and he's not healthier.

So I remember saying to one of the docs, he's not going to make it, is he?

And I remember the doc just kind of going... And then Steve woke up one morning and he said, I wanna die and I wanna die today.

- I remember it was a freezing day.

I was sitting in my garage on my rowing machine.

Steve's number showed up on my phone and it was just Steve Berman.

And I knew that something was off.

And when I picked up, it was not Steve's voice, it was somebody unfamiliar to me, asking me to come to the hospital so that I could say goodbye to Steve.

I just, I remember my world dropping out at that moment.

- I was very touched because there were some people that Steve chose specifically to say goodbye to.

And I was one of those people.

That was actually one of the most generous things that one could imagine, to be asked to go to Steve's bedside and be told that our friendship meant a great deal to him because it certainly meant a great deal to me.

(soft music) - When I received a call from Elaine, I immediately got into the car.

I went to the hospital.

I was able to give him a hug.

I was grateful to have met him and how much I loved him.

As I was walking out of the room, she whispered in my ear that I must be very special because he had only called three people that morning.

And that's something I will take with me always in the sense that it gives me even more power to continue to be a better physician and a better person for him.

- It's hard.

I mean, it's hard.

I think the hard thing for the first year is you just can't believe the finality of someone's dying.

You're just, somebody you've seen for 49 years.

You can't believe you're never, ever, ever gonna see them again.

- I'll speak for myself that as a physician, when you're faced with death, either in your family or within your professional circle, I think from a practical sense, we rationalize the illness or the suffering or the passing, I think easier than other folks as a result of our exposure to it in our profession.

But the relationship and the impact and the void that's created, I would offer, in some ways is more profound.

(soft music) - The outpouring from Steve's death was remarkable to me.

I mean, I knew people loved him, but I had no idea the impact that he had on the community.

- We lost a true champion of humanity in its best expression.

We lost a great leader and a great human being.

- Somebody with that much integrity, there aren't that many people like that anymore.

So I think the world is, really the world is gonna miss Steve a lot.

(soft music) - A strong, steadfast voice of insisting on change, someone who's very thoughtful in his leadership, and someone who was incredibly skilled at bringing people together to be more effective in their advocacy.

- Steve Berman was one of my most important mentors and one of my most transformational friends in life.

- One of the things that I saw in Steve that made this easier, it was something that he modeled, and it's something that I've kind of taken up as my own practice was being there.

Being there consistently.

Excellent.

Doesn't hurt at all, right?

Okay, let's look in this one.

You are doing so good.

- One of the probably most important lessons Steve taught me was that you're not just a doctor at work.

You're a doctor in the world and it's a responsibility.

So I think we touched on some of it.

It's like, it feels personal.

It's relatable.

Responsibility sounds like a heavy word.

It wasn't to Steve.

It was this jewel you got to, the privilege of carrying with you.

It lightened your load.

So let's unpack that a little bit.

What's moving?

What's moving to you all?

I certainly feel inspired to be for others what Steve Berman was for me, and to really delight in watching others grow and succeed.

(people chattering) - So they're on second readings right now.

- I feel like Steve is looking down on all of us, especially those of us who were in the trenches when it was first so hard to get anything done.

He would want us to be as generous to the newcomers as he was to us, and to make sure we're always looking out for a new generation of leaders and mentoring them along the way.

- By the end of that eight-week program, I had all four of those kids saying, I want to take my mental health seriously.

I'm interested in sobriety, not only for my substance of choice, but all substances.

- The biggest opportunity somebody that is just starting training has is appreciate where you are and appreciate the potential mentors that you have and just take the most out of the time that you have with them to get to know them and get to know you and get to share those dreams that you have.

You never will know when you're going to meet that Steve Berman in the future.

- [Narrator] We didn't lose Steve Berman.

Steve Berman transformed himself into many of us, and Steve Berman lives now in many of our hearts and minds to continue the work that he so committed to.

- [Narrator] I learned from Steve to let a thousand flowers bloom.

- [Announcer] "Steve Berman, an American Pediatrician" has been made possible by a grant from the American Academy of Pediatrics, an organization of 67,000 pediatricians committed to the optimal physical, mental, and social health and well-being for all infants, children, adolescents, and young adults.

(soft music)