Dr. Deborah A. Frank met Duvon Haughton when he was 10 months old, rushed to Boston Medical Center with an infection. The baby weighed a scant 14 pounds, roughly the weight expected for a 3-month-old.
“He was lying on the bed, floppy-looking,” recalled Frank, founder and director of the hospital’s Grow Clinic. The youngest of six children in a struggling immigrant family, Duvon did not have enough to eat at home.
The Grow Clinic provided food, supplies, medical help, social workers, and Duvon’s first toy, a truck — typical treatment at the largest clinic in a network established in 1984 by the state Legislature to address childhood malnutrition.