Regina Benjamin
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Regina Marcia Benjamin (1956- ) is a nationally recognized humanitarian and an expert in rural medicine. She has dedicated
her 
Pres. Barack Obama Nominates Regina Benjaminprofessional life to providing medical care for the community of Bayou La Batre, Alabama. Benjamin also serves on several boards and has been featured on television and in newspapers and magazines. She was nominated
for the office of U.S. Surgeon General on July 13, 2009, by President Barack Obama and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on
October 29, 2009, becoming the 18th Surgeon General.
Regina Benjamin was born in 1956 in Mobile and raised in Daphne by her divorced mother, who worked as a waitress. She graduated from Xavier University in New Orleans
and then entered medical school at Atlanta's Morehouse College. Two years later, she transferred to the University of Alabama
at Birmingham, earning a medical degree in 1984. In 1991, she completed an MBA degree at Tulane University. In 1984, Benjamin
began her internship and residency program at the Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon, 
Regina Benjaminfocusing on family medicine. In 1987, in conjunction with the National Health Service Corps, she returned to Alabama and opened
a practice in the rural town of Bayou La Batre, in Mobile County. She was the town's only doctor until April 2000 and achieved recognition for improving the health of local residents.
In 1995, the American Medical Association (AMA) appointed her to its board of trustees, making her the youngest person and
the first African American female to serve. Three years later, she received the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human
Rights. In 2002, she was named president of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama, becoming the first African American woman to head the organization. Benjamin has been honored with a number of humanitarian,
medical, and civic awards. She is a current member of the AMA Council on Ethical and 
Regina BenjaminJudicial Affairs and the co-author of How's Your Health? What You Can Do To Make Your Health and Health Care Better. Benjamin is also a member of the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine and served on the boards of the Partnership
for a Drug-Free America, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, and Physicians for Human Rights, among others. She
was a Kellogg National Fellow and a Rockefeller Next Generation Leader and is also a trustee of Birmingham-Southern College and Florida A&M University. In 1994, Time magazine selected Benjamin as one of its "Fifty Future Leaders under 40."
Benjamin is the former associate dean for rural health in the College of Medicine at the University of South Alabama (USA) and also served as medical director of what was then known as USA's Office of Rural Health and director of the university's telemedicine department, now known as the Office of Emerging Health Technologies. Since leaving USA, Benjamin has devoted her time to her rural health clinic in Bayou La Batre and to her efforts to improve the country's health care system in general.
Regina BenjaminShe was appointed by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala to the Clinical Laboratory Improvement
Act Committee and to the Council of Graduate Medical Education, and is a member of the Step 3 Committee. In Alabama, she has
served as vice president of the Governor's Commission on Aging and as a member of the Governor's Health Care Reform Task Force
and the Governor's Task Force on Children's Health. Benjamin is a tireless promoter of the cause of rural health care, both
in the United States and in Alabama. Choosing to spend her career in an impoverished area of the state rather than in a more
financially lucrative urban center makes Regina Benjamin an outstanding role model for young Alabamians.
Additional Resources
Byrd, Veronica. "Advocate for the Uninsured." Essence 31 (July 2003): 28.
"Doctor Fights Sickle Cell from the South." Modern Healthcare 30 (May 22, 2000): 35.
May, Lee. "Regina Benjamin: A Singular Doctor in a One-Doctor Town," Atlanta Journal and Constitution, March 24, 1996, p. 36S.
"Pioneering Rural Doctor," Atlanta Journal and Constitution, p. 5B, August 10, 1995.
Taylor, Mark. "A Voice for Patients; At Home in Rural Ala., She's Still Setting Milestones in Medicine." Modern Healthcare 30 (May 22, 2000): 34.
Wasson, John, and Regina Benjamin. How's Your Health? What You Can Do To Make Your Health and Health Care Better. Lebanon, N.H.: FNX Corporation, 2005.
Carol Ellis
University of South Alabama Archives
Published June 10, 2008
Last updated April 20, 2010
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