President Obama has nominated Dr. Regina Benjamin, a family physician from Bayou La Batre, Alabama, a rural community, to be the next Surgeon General.
The surgeon general is the people’s health advocate, a bully pulpit position that can be tremendously effective with a forceful personality.
Benjamin has that reputation.
A decade ago, the New York Times called her ‘‘angel in a white coat,’’ a country doctor who made house calls along the impoverished Gulf Coast, paid whatever her patients could scrounge.
From those early days she has emerged as a national leader in the call to improve health disparities, pushed by the need in her own fishing community of Bayou La Batre, Ala., and its diverse patient mix—where immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos make up a growing part of the population.
This is a post that requires Senate confirmation, so expect the religious right to scrutinize Dr. Benjamin’s record on sex-ed advocacy and position on reproductive freedom. Here’s a snippet of her NIH bio:
Regina Benjamin practices as a country doctor in rural Alabama. As founder and CEO of the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic, Dr. Regina Benjamin is making a difference to the underserved poor in a small fishing village on the Gulf Coast of Alabama. It is a town of about 2500 people, about 80 percent of her patients live below the poverty level, and Dr. Benjamin is their only physician.
...Dr. Benjamin earned an M.B.A. degree in 1991. The same year she was selected for the American Medical Association’s “Unsung Hero Campaign”. In 1995 she was named a “Person of the Week” on ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, and in 1997 she received the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights. She was interviewed by People magazine in the article “Always On Call,” in May, 2002 and was the subject of an “Everyday Heroes” feature in the January 2003 issue of Reader’s Digest.
When her clinic was reduced to rubble by Hurricane Georges in 1998, Dr. Benjamin rolled up her sleeves and helped rebuild it, and continued to serve her patients by making house calls in her 1988 Ford pickup. As she explains her motivation, “I hope I make a difference one person at a time. By making a patient feel better, by being able to tell a mother that her baby is going to be okay. Whether her baby is four or forty-four the look on the mother’s face is the same. I also hope that I am making a difference in my community by providing a clinic where patients can come and receive health care with dignity.”
I have been involved in community activities since high school, and organized medicine such as the American Medical Association and the State medical associations, since medical school. By being involved, working hard and trying to do a good job, I have been elected to positions of leadership. I have remained involved to help improve healthcare in our community. Career-wise I still have a lot to do. We still have a lot of problems with our health care system, the high number of uninsured and underinsured, the need for improved access to healthcare services as well as a need for improved personal responsibility of our own health, good education, clean air, clean water and good work place environments.
Dr. Benjamin is also the first black woman to become president of the state medical society of Alabama. There isn’t anything controversial in her bio, so I’m sure the right will be digging away.
UPDATE: The White House has now released a statement from the President:
President Obama said, “Health care reform is about every family’s health and the health of our economy. And if there’s anyone who understands the urgency of meeting this challenge in a personal and powerful way, it’s the woman who will become our nation’s next Surgeon General, Doctor Regina Benjamin. I look forward working with her in the months and years ahead.”
The full release is below the fold.
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
___________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 13, 2009
President Obama Announces Nominee for Surgeon General
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate Regina M. Benjamin as Surgeon General, Department of Health and Human Services.
President Obama said, “Health care reform is about every family’s health and the health of our economy. And if there’s anyone who understands the urgency of meeting this challenge in a personal and powerful way, it’s the woman who will become our nation’s next Surgeon General, Doctor Regina Benjamin. I look forward working with her in the months and years ahead.”
President Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individual today:
Regina M. Benjamin, Nominee for Surgeon General, Department of Health and Human Services
Regina M. Benjamin, MD, MBA, is Founder and CEO of the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in Bayou La Batre, Alabama. She is the Immediate Past-Chair of the Federation of State Medical Boards of the United States, and previously served as Associate Dean for Rural Health at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine. In 2002, she became President of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama, making her the first African American woman to be president of a State Medical Society in the United States. Dr. Benjamin holds a BS in Chemistry from Xavier University, New Orleans. She was in the 2nd class at Morehouse School of Medicine and received her MD degree from the University of Alabama, Birmingham, as well as an MBA from Tulane University. She completed her residency in family medicine at the Medical Center of Central Georgia. Dr. Benjamin received the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights in 1998, and was elected to the American Medical Association Board of Trustees in 1995, making her the first physician under age 40 and the first African-American woman to be elected. Dr. Benjamin was previously named by Time Magazine as one of the “Nation’s 50 Future Leaders Age 40 and Under.” She was also featured in a New York Times article, “Angel in a White Coat”, as “Person of the Week” on ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, and as “Woman of the Year” by CBS This Morning. She received the 2000 National Caring Award which was inspired by Mother Teresa, as well as the papal honor Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice from Pope Benedict XVI. She is also a recent recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award.
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My only concern: people who have been such intensive front-line physicians sometimes need to pick up more than a little public health policy experience. Especiall now, with much of the NIH professional infrastructure in ruins.