Former NCMHD Council Member named “Genius”

Regina Benjamin, M.D.

Dr. Regina Benjamin, a past member of the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities advisory council and founder of the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic serving the Gulf Coast fishing community of Bayou La Batre, Alabama, has been named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow for 2008. This so-called genius award carries with it $500,000 in no strings support over the next five years.

“This wonderful honor really came as a total surprise,” said Dr. Benjamin. “I was rushing out of the door that morning, when I got a phone call from a total stranger who said I was being give five-hundred thousand dollars to do with as I wished!”

In honoring her, the foundation describes Dr. Benjamin as a rural family physician who has forged an inspiring model of compassionate and effective medical care in one of the most underserved regions of the United States. Her work focuses on ensuring that society never forgets the most vulnerable among us.

Bayou La Batre, Alabama is a village of approximately 2,500 residents. Hurricanes Georges, in 1998, and Katrina, in 2005 devastated it twice in the past decade. Despite scarce resources, Benjamin painstakingly rebuilt her clinic after each disaster and set up networks to maintain contact with patients who were scattered by the storm. Her family practice treats all incoming patients, many of whom are uninsured, and she frequently travels by pickup truck to care for the most isolated and immobile in her region.

Dr. Benjamin, who attended Morehouse School of Medicine from 1980 to 1982, and received her M.D. in1984 from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is a skilled researcher as well. She is a member of the Dartmouth COOP Practice Based Research Network (PBRM) that translates research on preventive health measures into accessible, community-based interventions. Dr. Benjamin uses these techniques to decrease the disease burdens of her diverse patient base - immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, who comprise a third of Bayou La Batre’s population. She served on NCMHD’s Advisory Council from 2003 to 2007.

“We at NCMHD could not be more proud of Dr. Benjamin or more pleased that her great work has been recognized in this way,” said John Ruffin, Ph.D., Director National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities. “For this quiet leader, the genius of her work lies in the choices she has made: to serve the underserved, to be a voice for those who have none, and to work tirelessly to develop ways to eliminate health disparities.”
The MacArthur fellows are individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work. Twenty – five fellows were chosen this year: writers, scientists, artists, musicians and a farmer.
“Each is an original, and each confirms that the creative individual is alive and well, at the cutting edge, and at work to make our world a better place,” said Daniel J. Socolow, Director of the MacArthur Fellows Program.

The MacArthur Fellows Program encourages people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations. That is why the Foundation awards fellowships directly to individuals rather than through institutions.

So what is Dr. Benjamin going to do with the money? As one might expect, she says, “I simply want to make a difference with it.” First, she is designing a pipeline project, small scholarships of $500 each for four students a year, to encourage them to go into health careers.  The project will focus on sixth graders with the scholarship being presented at their sixth grade graduation ceremony. “This means a lot to rural and minority kids and their parents,” said Dr. Benjamin. “Also the program builds off ideas on how to eliminate health disparities that I was proud to be part of when I was on NCMHD’s Council.”

Dr. Benjamin is working with Dr. Nancy Dickey, president of the Texas A&M Health Science Center and former president of the American Medical Association to send these students to her science lab for 5,6,7th graders during the summer. The scholarship will pay for travel; Texas A&M will house the students and teach them.  Dr. Benjamin is looking for matching funds and to build a sustainable program.

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