The U.S. Senate has confirmed Regina M. Benjamin, M.D., M.B.A., to be surgeon general, the Department of Health and Human Services announced.
Benjamin, a doctor who has been practicing in rural Alabama, made news after Hurricane Katrina by rebuilding her rural clinic – and having to rebuild it again after it burned down.
As we noted when Benjamin was nominated, the Associated Press says Benjamin “was the first black woman to head a state medical society, received the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights and last fall received a MacArthur Foundation ‘genius grant.’” And “A decade ago, the New York Times called her ‘angel in a white coat,’ a country doctor who made house calls along the impoverished Gulf Coast, paid whatever her patients could scrounge.”
WKRG-Mobile/Pensacola has the news, comments from Sen. Jeff Sessions and reaction from Benjamin:
See President Obama’s announcement in July of Benjamin’s nomination:
