Overview
Beny Primm was born in West Virginia in 1928, and his family moved to the Bronx when he was 12. After serving as a paratrooper, he couldn't get into medical school in the U.S., so he earned his medical degree at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. He became an anesthesiologist at Harlem Hospital and later specialized in addiction treatment. In 1969, he co-founded the Addiction Research and Treatment Corporation in Brooklyn, which combined treatment with social and psychiatric services. He led it for more than forty years as it grew into one of the nation's largest minority community-based substance abuse treatment programs, and it continues today as START Treatment & Recovery Centers.
Why He Matters
Primm brought addiction treatment into the neighborhoods where people lived, and the organization he built now runs programs in Brooklyn and Manhattan. He advised several presidential administrations, beginning with President Nixon's. He was also the first director of the federal Office of Treatment Improvement, which later became the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. In 2024, a stretch of Fulton Street in Brooklyn outside his first clinic was co-named Dr. Beny J. Primm Way. His career shows how one doctor's decision to focus on addiction can grow into care for generations of patients.
