Soror’s Spotlight
NOTABLE DELTA!
Dr. Regina Benjamin: Member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
President Obama announced Monday his choice for Surgeon General — Dr. Regina Benjamin, a 52-year-old family practice doctor who has spent most of her career tending to the needs of poor patients in a Gulf Coast clinic in Alabama. ”When people couldn’t pay, she didn’t charge them,” Obama said. “When the clinic wasn’t making money, she didn’t take a salary for herself.”He called Benjamin “a relentless promoter” of programs to fight preventable illness.
Benjamin cited the toll of preventable illness as the reason her family was not with her at the announcement: Her father died with diabetes and high blood pressure; her older brother and only sibling died at age 44 of an HIV-related illness; her mother died of lung cancer after taking up smoking as a girl; her mother’s twin brother could not attend because he is at home “struggling for each breath” after a lifetime of smoking.
“I cannot change my family’s past, but I can be a voice to improve our nation’s health for the future,” she said. Benjamin received a bachelor’s degree in 1979 from Xavier University of Louisiana, attended Morehouse School of Medicine from 1980 to 1982, and received a doctor of medicine degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1984. She completed her residency in family practice at the Medical Center of Central Georgia in 1987.
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