6 x 6, from wall to wall

The Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture is one of those hidden international gathering places in New York, oddly cosmpolitain, painfully connected to world realities. Dr. Allen S. Keller has run the program since its inception, and was profiled by Jan Hoffman of the Times in 2003. Tina Rosenberg, who has written extensively on the effects of violence on people in developing countries, wrote a portrait of the center's work in 1997, again for the Times, which has covered the treatment of refugees in New York with some care.

But it's a story that continues to evolve, as the clinic adapts to, sadly, new forms of torture, new waves of arrivals (almost all the referrals, one of the pyschiatrists there told me, come through word-of-mouth in the refugee community), and new conditions here in New York. Language access laws and services have changed doctor-patient interactions, not always for the better. (The same psychiatrist describes the way patients all of a sudden feel cultural stigma once a native translator enters the room, for example.) Mexicans with kitchen jobs, who come in for a quick treatment for a cough, sometimes find themselves quaratined in the TB wing, knowing that a day lost on the job is a job lost. There are still challenges to explore. More as I get better access to the hospital.