You may now add the name Dr. Regina Benjamin to the roster of President Obama’s cabinet. Last week, the U.S. Senate utilized a unanimous voice vote to officially confirm Dr. Benjamin as the third African American Surgeon General of the United States.
The 53-year-old family practice doctor received her medical degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1984. She was the first female African-American board member of the American Medical Association and served one term as chairwoman of the group’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs. Since then, Dr. Benjamin has spent most of her career tending to the needs of poor patients in a Gulf Coast clinic she founded two decades ago in Alabama.
Some critics were not happy with the selection of Dr. Benjamin, saying she could not set a healthy example for America’s youth because she herself is overweight. But President Obama considers Dr. Benjamin an exceptional choice and has called her “a relentless promoter” of programs to fight preventable illness.
