DR. GARY GROSS

ABCD Lifetime Health Equity Access Champion

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Gary Gross, M.D., served as ABCD’s medical director for family planning for 41 years before retiring in March 2022. A leader in essential and comprehensive family planning services, Dr. Gross’s commitment to health equity and women’s rights set the standard and transformed lives. He helped form the Massachusetts Family Planning Consortium, which outlined the initial grant application for Title X funding for Massachusetts, with ABCD as the grantee. He also partnered with Barbara Eck Menning, founder of RESOLVE, to establish the first-ever Title X funded program for early diagnosis and treatment of infertility within family planning sites, bringing traditionally out-of-reach care directly to the communities served by ABCD.  

Involved in key events marking the evolution of women’s rights, access to contraception and the provision of quality health care free from interference, Dr. Gross delivered the keynote speech at an ABCD-organized event at the Massachusetts State House in 2005 celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Griswold vs. Connecticut. That decision paved the way to nearly unanimous acceptance of contraception in America. Before that, in Connecticut and several other states, birth control counseling and prescription of contraceptives was illegal.

Dr. Gross holds a B.S. from Union College and received his M.D. from Yale University. He has held numerous academic and clinical appointments and fellowships at Harvard University, Yale University and other universities and medical centers. Reflecting on his tenure with ABCD, Dr. Gross, characteristically credited others: “It was our collective inspiration to embrace ABCD’s role and participation in local communities characterized both by poverty and color and to establish family planning programs within the neighborhood health centers, sites that were staffed and led by people of the community.”