A South End pediatrician and community healthcare leader was named a 2025 Commonwealth Heroine last month, an award that recognizes extraordinary acts of service by women in Massachusetts.

Dr. Robyn Riseberg, the founder of non-profit health clinic Boston Community Pediatrics (BCP) on Albany Street, was nominated for the award for her work of bringing equity to pediatric healthcare in the city.

Riseberg has spent her entire medical career in community health, working with clinics like the South End Community Health Center.

She started (BCP) in 2020 as the first non-profit private practice in the state, after she became frustrated with the bureaucracy of medicine slowing down how patients can access care.

“After listening to families for 15 years and understanding what their frustrations were in terms of accessing healthcare and getting through to a live person on the phone when they needed help, I thought, ‘There has to be a better way to do this,’” Riseberg said.

BCP has only grown in its first five years.

When it opened, it had 12 staff members. It now has 23, including five pediatricians, one pediatric nurse practitioner, and two full-time mental health clinicians. Riseberg said she’s especially proud that nobody from the medical team has left. BCP was also named one of the best places to work in the city by the Boston Business Journal this year.

“It’s really been transformative to be able to create my utopia of healthcare, and not just mine, but what the patients want and need,” Riseberg said. “Normally, healthcare models start at the top and trickle down, and at the bottom is the patient. Here, we start with the patient and everything that we do goes out from there. An example is most healthcare providers have 15-minute or 20-minute visits for patients. Our visits are 30 to 60 minutes long, because we know that patients need more time with their providers.”

The clinic is located at 527 Albany Street, just down the road from the Boston University medical campus. The South End has been designated by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration as a medically underserved area and has one of the highest percentages of affordable housing in the city.

In 2024, the clinic treated approximately 1,600 patients. The majority of those patients are people of color and come from low-income families. “In approximately 50 percent of Latinx families served, parents speak limited English,” the clinic wrote in a statement. “Nearly half of patients belong to single-parent households, over 40 percent are food insecure, and many live below the Federal Poverty Level. Over 80 percent of BCP's patients have Medicaid as their primary or secondary insurance.”

Because of this, Riseberg said, the clinic both partners with external community services in the city and offers help with housing and food insecurity in-house.

“We don’t just give them a piece of paper, we actually help them fill out housing applications,” Riseberg said. “We help them renew applications. We help them get into emergency shelter. With partnerships, at every visit, we provide food and hygiene products and underwear and clothing, to best support families so that they don’t have to go to multiple places to get everything they need. That’s just a part of the care that we provide.”