Dr. Benjamin's credentials include:
- Former CEO of the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in Alabama
- Former Associate Dean for Rural Health at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine in Mobile
- Immediate Past Chair of the Federation of State Medical Boards of the United States
- The first physician under age 40 and the first African-American woman to be elected to the American Medical Association Board of Trustees.
- Former President of the American Medical Association Education and Research Foundation
- Chair of the AMA Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA)
- Former President of the Medical Association State of Alabama
- A BS in chemistry from Xavier University, New Orleans
- MD degree from the University of Alabama, Birmingham
- MBA from Tulane University and five Honorary Doctorates
- Attended Morehouse School of Medicine
- Member of the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine
- A Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians
- A Kellogg National Fellow
- A Rockefeller Next Generation Leader
- Board member, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
- Board member, Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured
- Board member, Catholic Health Association
- Board member, Morehouse School of Medicine
- 1998 recipient of the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights
- Named by Time Magazine as one of the “Nation’s 50 Future Leaders Under Age 40 and Under”
- Recipient of the 2000 National Caring Award
- Recipient of the papal honor Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice from Pope Benedict XVI
- Was awarded a MacArthur Genius Award Fellowship
Our TV's spew commercial after commercial that brainwash us to believe that for just about every health problem or aliment, the solution is to take a pill, have something removed, or buy some kind of gadget that will make whatever ails us go away. If you've ever watched the evening news on TV, then I know that you know what I'm talking about.
America is overstocked with unfit and unhealthy citizens. We're too fat, we eat too much, we have high blood pressure, diabetes, unhealthy levels of LDL cholesterol, and we don't exercise enough, or perhaps, not at all. We have health problems galore that are direct results of our American lifestyle of excess and over sized portions; the things we buy, the things we do (or don't do), what we watch on television, and our runaway consumption of goods, services, and food.
I think we have a national health emergency!
I am not an ignorant guy and I don't live in a cave in the Black Hills in South Dakota. Up until today, however, and before searching the Internet, I had no idea who our Surgeon General is, or even what the good doctor looks like.
I was impressed by Dr. Benjamin's credentials, and surely I must be correct to assume that Dr. Benjamin is well educated and well traveled. What I am unable to fathom is in light of America's serious national health emergency, why I haven't heard a peep out of "America's Doctor."
Why isn't Dr. Benjamin hosting a prime time weekly TV program to show us how to be healthy shoppers and healthy eaters? Perhaps Dr. Oz knows why. We're not nutritionist by birth, so we need help figuring out how much salt is too much, and what a healthy portion of looks like. How about it, Doc? People are already glued to their TV's, so why not stick something beneficial in front of their faces?
I say, Dr. Benjamin, use TV as a tool to spread your healthy gospel.
Why doesn't Dr. Benjamin have public service TV ads to discourage us from ingesting so much medicine and subsequently causing even more health problems? Why can't Dr. Benjamin offer us unhealthy, fat, and lazy Americans solutions to our self-induced national health emergency, instead of allowing us to fall deeper into a TV-induced brainwashed trance that is leading us to early graves?
I don't know what Dr. Benjamin does all day, nor what her priorities are, but I sure would like Dr. Benjamin to circle the wagons and get down to the business of looking after her patients and really being America's Doctor.
Michael Carroll N4MC
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