In celebration of Black History Month, we invite you join us in signing onto this resolution honoring the innovation of Pittsburgh’s very own Freedom House Ambulance Service.

The Freedom House Ambulance Service was founded in 1967 in the historic Hill District of Pittsburgh and became the first emergency medical service in the United States of America to be staffed by professionally trained paramedics. At the time, ambulance services in the City of Pittsburgh were handled by the police department and consisted primarily of rapid transportation to hospitals without the provision of medical treatment en route.

Emergency response times were long, and in predominantly Black neighborhoods such as the Hill District, emergency calls often went unanswered altogether.

The Freedom House Ambulance Service was born as solution to this neglect. A groundbreaking innovation, it combined paramedic training with a workforce development initiative. The first round of recruits were 25 Black men from the Hill District. They underwent an extensive training period to become the nation’s first paramedics.

The paramedic training standards and ambulance design innovations pioneered by the Freedom House Ambulance Service shaped emergency medical service curricula and operational models across the nation and influenced the development of modern emergency medical systems internationally.

The legacy of the Freedom House Ambulance Service endures as a transformative chapter in public health, emergency medicine, and innovation in the face of discrimination, originating in Pennsylvania and changing the course of emergency medical care worldwide

We encourage you to sign onto this resolution honoring this foundational achievement by Black Pennsylvanian’s and celebrate this history which is unknown to many.