There have been reports that Dr. Regina Benjamin, a physician in rural Alabama, is President Obama's pick for Surgeon General. She will be the third official female surgeon general (Audrey F. Manley was appointed as "acting" Surgeon General after Clinton fired Joycelyn Elders for suggesting that masturbaton should be taught to pubescent teens.) The interesting thing is, all three of these women, Antonia Coello Novello, Joycelyn Elders, and Manley are minorities. As an African American, Benjamin will not break the trend.
According to the MacArthur Foundation, Benjamin is:
…a rural family physician forging an inspiring model of compassionate and effective medical care in one of the most underserved regions of the United States. In 1990, she founded the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic to serve the Gulf Coast fishing community of Bayou La Batre, Alabama, a village of approximately 2,500 residents devastated twice in the past decade by Hurricanes Georges, in 1998, and Katrina, in 2005. Despite scarce resources, Benjamin has painstakingly rebuilt her clinic after each disaster and set up networks to maintain contact with patients scattered across multiple evacuation sites.
It will cetainly be refreshing to have a Surgeon General who has first hand experience with the kinds of health risks a lack of health education and sexual education can bring to a community. Hopefully, Obama will not balk if she makes the same kind of suggestion as Elders once did.
