The Duke Community was saddened to learn of the recent passing of Dr. E. Harvey Estes. He leaves behind an extraordinary legacy of leadership, advocacy, and commitment to care. 
Dr. Edward Harvey Estes Jr., MD was born May 1, 1925 in Gay, Georgia. He graduated from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia (1944, BA; 1947, MD). He began his medical internship at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta and completed it at Duke University Hospital. Prior to joining Duke's staff in 1953, Estes served in the United States Navy from 1950 to 1952. He became chief of the cardiology service at Durham Veterans Affairs Hospital from 1953 to 1954 and chief of the medical service at the Durham Veterans Affairs Hospital from 1956 to 1962. In 1966, Estes was appointed Chair of the newly created Department of Community and Family Medicine. One year later, he also assumed responsibility for the Physician Assistant (PA) Program. The program recruited and trained community health workers from impoverished communities and helped established rural satellite clinics in these communities staffed primarily by PAs.
In the 1970s, Estes turned his attention to the growth and development of family medicine residency programs and the promotion of preventive medicine. He served in both state and national leadership positions. As a leader of the North Carolina Medical Society and the North Carolina Institute of Medicine, he built a coalition of health professionals dedicated to training and placing family physicians, PAs, and nurse practitioners into medically underserved communities.
Estes retired from Duke in 1990 to become the founding director of the North Carolina Medical Society Foundation's Community Practitioner Program, a program designed to increase the number of health care providers in the North Carolina's underserved areas. He remained involved with the program until 2000.
We are honored to preserve Dr. Estes’s personal papers at the Archives. We also have several oral history interviews with him. Please contact the Archives to access these materials.