A storyline in HBO Max’s “The Pitt” helped spark a surge of public interest in Freedom House Ambulance Service, one of the nation’s earliest African American–staffed paramedic and EMT programs—showing how fictional TV can pull lost local Black history into nat
On the day HBO Max viewers watched Willie Alexander’s story unfold inside a fictional Pittsburgh hospital, something else happened far beyond the screen: people started looking for the real history the episode referenced.
In Season 1. Episode 8 of “The Pitt. ” a man named Willie Alexander arrives with a malfunctioning pacemaker and drops medical terminology and references to hospital facilities an average patient wouldn’t know. As the episode progresses. the emergency room staff learns Willie once worked for Freedom House Ambulance Service. described in the show as one of the nation’s first paramedic services staffed entirely by African Americans.
Even though the hospital and the ER staff are fictional, the organization behind that detail was not. Freedom House Ambulance Service was real—and the attention it received after the episode aired was immediate.
Ahead of Juneteenth. the timing isn’t lost on officials in Eagle Harbor. a Black coastal town in Maryland. who are reflecting on the history and legacy of their community and how hard it can be to preserve it. Over the past five years. Juneteenth has been recognized as a federal holiday. encouraging Americans to reflect not only on the nation’s history of slavery. but on “forgotten. ignored and intentionally buried stories” about Black America.
That theme—stories that resurface decades later—has now been examined in a study from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Public Health. The research measures how a TV storyline can change what the public notices, and what it reaches for online.
The study, published by a team led by Dr. Beth Hoffman. assistant professor of behavioral and community health sciences at Pitt Public Health. analyzed digital traces before and after Willie’s storyline aired. Researchers looked at Google Trends and Reddit posts surrounding the episode’s debut on Feb. 20, 2025.
They found that searches for “Freedom House” rose 170% one day after the show’s initial broadcast, with search volumes remaining higher than average throughout the following week.
On Reddit, the team examined 196 relevant posts. More than a third of those posts shared content about Freedom House. The researchers also highlighted that the discussion included “emotional reactions or surprise” from viewers who said they hadn’t known about Freedom House before watching the show.
The study builds on Hoffman’s earlier work from 2022. That prior review examined scientific literature on the impact TV storylines about health have on viewers. In that review. the long-running show “ER” was identified as the most frequently studied program. while the most frequently examined health topics were sexual behavior and mental health.
Hoffman said she expected that health storylines on screen can have a profound impact—and that social media data can be a useful way to see it. What she said was different this time was combining two sources of evidence.
“From that review and other studies I’ve published. I knew that health storylines on screen can have a profound impact on viewers and social media data can be a good way to look at this. ” Hoffman said. “But no one had used both Google Trends and Reddit data together to look at this. That inspired the methods we used.”.
The episode’s accuracy and relevance also mattered to the people who helped bring Freedom House into the “The Pitt” writers’ room. The service made it into the series thanks to Dr. Sylvia Owusu-Ansah, a co-author of the study and a medical consultant for the show.
Owusu-Ansah said sharing the story of these medical pioneers carried “personal significance.”
“We are underrepresented in health care, and there is an enormous sense of pride knowing that somebody who looked like me started this,” Owusu-Ansah said in a news release about the study.
Hoffman also argued that the education in a storyline doesn’t have to fight with entertainment.
“‘The Pitt’ is a powerful example of how viewers not only appreciate the education, but use the story as a springboard to learn more online,” she said.
The researchers said they are now considering the same approach for other “The Pitt” storylines, including an organ donation storyline in Season 1 and health insurance storylines in Season two.
Before the study’s analysis, there was a moment that Hoffman described as a catalyst. She said the team was inspired by screening the episode about Willie and Freedom House at the university. The event included a panel discussion featuring six original members of the Freedom House staff.
Hoffman described a strong reaction from attendees.
“People were captivated. They kept saying, ‘I can’t believe this is the first time I’m hearing about this,’ and there was a lot of frustration,” she said.
The story of Freedom House itself begins in 1967, according to a short history posted on the University of Pittsburgh’s website. At the time, pre-hospital care and emergency medical services were rudimentary, at best.
First responders were a patchwork of organizations that included volunteer firefighters, police, private companies and funeral directors, many of whom had no medical training. Ambulances, meanwhile, weren’t functioning like on-the-go operating rooms. They served mainly as transportation.
A federal study published in 1966 estimated that upwards of 50,000 deaths per year were attributed to subpar pre-hospital care—an assessment that helped reshape the EMS industry.
Racism, the Freedom House history notes, was also a major problem in the city. Most ambulance drivers refused to service low-income, Black neighborhoods.
In response, several prominent Pittsburgh men pitched Freedom House Enterprises, a Black-owned nonprofit, on recruiting and training uneducated, unemployed African American men to run an ambulance service for the Hill District community.
The result was Freedom House Ambulance Service. which became one of the nation’s first EMS companies staffed by what are now known as emergency medical technicians. or EMTs. The Freedom House team pioneered life-saving services performed in-transit. including intubation and defibrillation. practices that weren’t used outside hospital walls.
In its first year of operation. Freedom House Ambulance Service made 5. 868 runs and transported 4. 627 patients—an average of 15 calls a day. The University of Pittsburgh notes its dead-on-arrival record was 1.9%. The training, the history says, helped set the stage for the national standard of EMT training still in use today.
But the legacy did not last in the city’s hands. Despite its innovations, Freedom House Ambulance Service was shut down in 1975 after the City of Pittsburgh launched its own ambulance service.
Instead of working alongside Freedom House, the city took over operations and let go of the majority of its crew. The city replaced the experienced Black EMTs with predominantly white staff.
Freedom House, like so many elements of Black American history, became a transformative moment born from necessity, neglect and racism—yet was later pushed aside in the “doldrums of history” despite its lasting impact and legacy.
For Hoffman and Owusu-Ansah, the new evidence suggests those stories don’t have to stay buried.
As the analysis from the Pitt team shows, these histories can gain a second life when writers and producers choose to amplify them.
Hoffman said entertainment media can do more than entertain when it’s shaped with expertise.
“Entertainment media can play a meaningful role in educating the public and encouraging people to learn more. including about topics like health equity and systemic racism. ” she said. “When a storyline is done well and done with expert input. it can have a big impact. even when it’s on screen very briefly.”.
In the weeks after “The Pitt” debuted its Freedom House thread, viewers didn’t just watch a scene. They searched for the name, talked about what they’d missed, and—one day at a time—pulled a forgotten piece of Black medical history back into view.
The Pitt HBO Max Freedom House Ambulance Service Juneteenth University of Pittsburgh Dr. Beth Hoffman Google Trends Reddit EMT history health equity systemic racism