Swampland.com

Doctor from Alabama Obama's Choice for Surgeon General

Once again Alabama has made the national news. For the last two weeks the web has been buzzing about a speech that financial guru and CEO of Retirement Systems of Alabama  Dr. David Bronner made to the Tuscaloosa Rotary Club. No actual copy of the speech has surfaced, and the Tuscaloosa News merely reported that Bronner observed that economy was in dire straits. However, an email version of the speech from an unnamed "reliable" source quickly made the rounds of the internet and was picked up by bloggers, The Gadsden Times ran an interview with Bronner later in the week and the Anniston Star also, but the most specific information came from the email and the The Montgomery Independent. Bronner also wrote to his constituency in this month's RSA Advisor article. Once again, he counseled patience and prudence. He assured the investors that "RSA real estate is in good shape." However, the stock market will require time to recover from the hit it took in 2008. He hopes that Alabama may "dodge the bullet," but his outlook is less than optimistic.

This week the news is more exciting. President Barack Obama has selected Mobile native and award winning physician Dr. Regina Benjamin as his choice for the next Surgeon General of the United States. Dr. Benjamin was the first African-American woman, and the first person under 40, to be elected to the American Medical Association (AMA) Board of Trustees. She is a 1998 Mandela Award Winner, a former Kellogg National Fellow, has been featured as ABC Television's Person of the Week, and in 1996 was chosen by CBS This Morning as Woman of the Year.

Dr. Benjamin is well known for her humanitarian work. After  completing her MD at the University of Alabama Birmingham, Dr. Benjamin returned to the area of south Alabama where she was born and set up a non-profit rural health clinic in the tiny shrimping community of Bayou Le Batre. Benjamin is founder and CEO of the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in Bayou La Batre, Alabama. 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. in 2005 Hurricane Katrina's 25-foot surge hit the entire town including the clinic, even though Bejamin had built the second clinic further inland. She saw patients at a shelter until she got a FEMA trailer. After months of rebuilding and labor-intensive cleanup efforts by volunteers, the clinic was set to reopen on Jan.  2, 2006, but on New Year's Eve a fire burned it to the ground. Benjamin once again rebuilt..
 

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."

Benjamin is former associate dean for rural health at the University of South Alabama's College of Medicine in Mobile, where she administers the Alabama AHEC program and previously directed its Telemedicine Program. Dr. Benjamin as spent time doing missionary work in Honduras and is on the Board of Physicians for Human Rights. Her interests also include environmental issues.

---Penne J. Laubenthal

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