Recommendations for a progressive pediatrician in Boston?

March 6, 2006 5:05 PM

Recommendations for a progressive pediatrician in Boston?

We just moved to Roslindale, Mass. and are looking for a new pediatrician for our 8-month-old son. We're fairly liberal and forward-thinking and want a healthcare provider who is as progressive as we are. We both work in the Longwood Medical Area and would prefer a provider near home, work, or in the nearby areas (Jamaica Plain, Brookline, etc.). My wife is a Nurse Practitioner and I work in clinical research compliance, so between the two of us we are fairly literate when it comes to medicine. Eventually, through our jobs, we will probably come by some recommednations, but as we are brand-spanking-new to Boston, we don't have much of a community here and we don't know where to look just yet. Our boy is due for a check-up next week so we'd like to find a provider soon.

We know about the various hospitals, websites and other means for finding a pediatrician, but what we are looking for are first-hand recommendations from parents in our area.

We want a pediatrician (MD or NP) who is as forward-thinking as we are.

To give you an idea of where we stand, we believe in western (scientific) medicine but we're also interested in novel approaches. we want a blend of the traditional wellness and the modern (new-agey?) stuff, but we want to avoid ultra-cautious or out-dated modes of pediatric thinking. We're not anti-medicine or anti-physician (we get our son all of his immunizations), but we're not exactly traditional either. We had our child in a birthing center, in a hospital, with both a midwife and a doctor, and we used hypnobirthing in an attempt to avoid unnecessary medication.

posted by mds35 to health & fitness (5 comments total)

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posted by mds35 at 5:06 PM on March 6, 2006

metafilter's own favorite boston pediatric hematologist might have some recommendations.
posted by judith at 6:51 PM on March 6, 2006

My wife and I are about to have our first child. Among the recommendations we got for pediatricians was Jason Gottlieb at the Southern Jamaica Plain Health Center. My wife spoke with him and liked him a lot.

We ended up deciding to go with Centre Pediatrics, partly because of location and parking, and partly because the size of Centre Pediatrics allows them to offer more conveniences.

(For reference, my wife and I are planning to have the baby at home, I've had lots of positive experiences with acupuncture, and I get really upset at people who don't immunize their children or doctors who support them.)

If you want to go further afield (e.g. Somerville) we got other recommendations that I could try to recollect.
posted by alms at 7:40 PM on March 6, 2006

I can't really speak to the alternative medicine portion of your question, but our (almost) 2-year-old son sees Dr. Jack Lasche, M.D. at the West Roxbury Harvard Vanguard. And we've been nothing but happy with him.
posted by ssmith at 7:56 AM on March 7, 2006

This is in Davis Square in Somerville (on the Red Line) Dr. Roy Berkowitz-Shelton is great. A little eccentric, but very smart and friendly.
posted by dorcas at 12:14 PM on March 8, 2006