Abstract
Some of the work behind this remarkable physician includes founding and serving as CEO of the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in Alabama. She is the former Associate Dean for Rural Health at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine in Mobile and immediate Past Chair of the Federation of State Medical Boards of the United States.
In 1995, she was the first physician under age 40 and the first African American woman to be elected to the American Medical Association Board of Trustees. In 2002 she became President of the Medical Association State of Alabama, making her the first African American female president of a State Medical Society in the United States. Dr. Benjamin has a BS in chemistry from Xavier University, New Orleans, her MD degree from the University of Alabama, Birmingham, an MBA from Tulane University, New Orleans, and five honorary doctorates. She attended Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, GA, and completed her family medicine residency in Macon, GA. Dr. Benjamin is a member of the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine and a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians. She was a Kellogg National Fellow and a Rockefeller Next Generation Leader. Some of her numerous board memberships include the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, Catholic Health Association, and Morehouse School of Medicine. In 1998 Dr. Benjamin was the U.S. recipient of the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights.
Her list of accomplishments and awards is breathtaking. Her energy, stamina, and perseverance are best illustrated by the fact that she helped rebuild her clinic twice, after Hurricane George in 1998 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. During those times she made house calls in her 1988 Ford pickup.
Not since Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, MD, ScD, have we had such a champion for the singular importance of breastfeeding. Her leadership assured the inclusion of breastfeeding in the Affordable Care Act and the work of the interagency Prevention Council.
The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine salutes this great leader and thanks her for her guidance in this crusade to revive breastfeeding across this country.