By Jonathan D. Salant and Kate Andersen
July 13 (Bloomberg) -- Regina Benjamin, a specialist in rural health care who founded a clinic to serve the poor along Alabama’s Gulf Coast, was named by President Barack Obama as his choice for U.S. surgeon general.
Obama, making the announcement today at the White House, called her an “outstanding candidate to be America’s leading spokesperson on issues of public health.”
Benjamin has focused on health-care delivery in areas that are underserved by medical facilities, according to a biography on the Web site of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthurFoundation, which awarded her a $500,000 fellowship grant in 2008.
She is the founder and chief executive officer of the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic, according to the MacArthur Foundation. The clinic and the town of Bayou La Batre, Alabama, were ravaged by both Hurricanes Georges in 1998 and Katrina in 2005. Benjamin worked in emergency rooms and nursing homes to earn extra money to keep the clinic running.
“She has been proven as a leader for this community,” said Stan Wright, Bayou La Batre’s mayor and a board member at Benjamin’s clinic. “She’s been proven through the toughest economic times and through disasters like Hurricane Katrina. I think this is the best choice that President Obama could ever have made.”
Mud-Caked Truck
Benjamin has made a mission of treating Bayou La Batre’s poor and immigrant communities, traveling in a mud-caked Toyota pickup truck to visit her stranded patients after Hurricane Katrina, Wright said in a telephone interview. When her neighbors in the town couldn’t pay, Benjamin has taken bags of oysters or a pound of crabmeat, Wright said.
“Doctor Benjamin never cared about money,” he said. “She made sure you got the best care and money was not the object.”
Benjamin will make a priority of ensuring “nobody will be turned away,” Wright said. “She’ll come up with some health- care policy to include every human being.”
Douglas Henley, chief executive officer of the American Academy of Family Physicians, said he expects Benjamin will take a wide view of her duties as surgeon general.
“She would call attention to disparities in health care, and to the need for health reform to focus on extending coverage to all Americans,” Henley said in a telephone interview. “I would expect this to be her broad focus, rather than past surgeons general who have called attention to a single issue like smoking or obesity.”
Benjamin grew up in Daphne, Alabama, according to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she received her medical degree in 1984. She was the first woman and first black to serve as president of the state’s medical association. She also was the first black woman elected to serve on the board of trustees of the American Medical Association.
Last year she was named by U.S. News and World Report as among America’s best leaders.
The position of surgeon general was created in 1870 to serve as the supervising surgeon for the U.S. hospital system and later as the administrator for the federal public-health system. The surgeon general’s role has evolved into that of a leading educator about public-health issues.
Sanjay Gupta, the television journalist and physician, was Obama’s original pick for surgeon general. Gupta withdrew from consideration in March, saying he wanted devote time to his family and his practice as a neurosurgeon while maintaining his broadcast career on CNN.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan D. Salant in Washington at jsalant@bloomberg.net; Kate Andersen in Washington at kandersen7@bloomberg.net Last Updated: July 13, 2009 12:01 EDT
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