A country doctor for surgeon general

Obama nominates an Alabama trailblazer
BY DESIREE HUNTER and LAURAN NEERGAARD • ASSOCIATED PRESS

BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. -- When Hurricane Katrina wrecked the little clinic in the coastal backwaters of Alabama, Dr. Regina Benjamin laid out medical charts to dry in the sun and hopped in a pickup truck to check on her patients.

When she had trouble treating the growing influx of southeast Asian immigrants in the shrimping community because of language barriers, she went to a nearby Vietnamese pool hall to find an interpreter.

Benjamin, 52, a general practitioner, was nominated Monday by President Barack Obama to be U.S. surgeon general.

She said she would combat preventable diseases. Her father died with diabetes and high blood pressure, her only brother of HIV. Her mother died of lung cancer because as a girl "she wanted to smoke just like her twin brother," an uncle now on oxygen.

"I cannot change my family's past. I can be a voice in the movement to improve our nation's health care and our nation's health," Benjamin said. "I want to be sure that no one falls through the cracks as we improve our health care system."

Pushed by the diverse patient mix of Bayou La Batre -- white, black and, increasingly, immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos -- Benjamin has emerged as a leader in the fight to close gaps in health.

She became the first black woman and the first doctor younger than 40 elected to the American Medical Association's board of trustees, and in 2002, became the first black woman to head a state medical society.

"For all the tremendous obstacles that she has overcome, Regina Benjamin also represents what's best about health care in America, doctors and nurses who give and care and sacrifice for the sake of their patients," Obama said in the White House Rose Garden.

After Katrina ruined the clinic in Bayou La Batre, it was rebuilt by volunteers -- then it burned down just as it was about to reopen. Her patients were so desperate for it to reopen that Benjamin later recalled a woman handing her an envelope containing $7.

"If she can find $7, I can figure out the rest," Benjamin said last fall as she received a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation genius grant and promised to use the money to help finish the job.

Today, the clinic is a brick building next to City Hall.

If confirmed by the Senate, Benjamin would assume a job as the people's health advocate, a position that can be tremendously influential when paired with an effective personality.