U.S. Surgeon General to discuss state of nation's health and future priorities on Sept. 13 at Roosevelt University

U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin will discuss “Health Reform, Public Health and the Surgeon General’s Priorities” at 11 a.m. on Monday, Sept. 13 during Roosevelt University’s 17th annual Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Distinguished Lecture.

The lecture, sponsored by Roosevelt’s Center for New Deal Studies and the Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, NY, is free and open to the public and will be held in the University’s seventh-floor Ganz Hall, 430 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago.

A rural family practice physician who spent much of her career tending to the needs of poor patients in a Gulf Coast clinic in Alabama, Vice Admiral Benjamin has been outspoken about the need to reduce the prevalence of obesity in America and has set out a vision as surgeon general for changing poor behaviors and attitudes about lifestyle and health.

The winner of many awards and honors, Benjamin has been the U.S. recipient of the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights, was named by Time Magazine as one of the “Nation’s 50 future Leaders Under Age 40,” was the Person of the Week on ABC’s World News Tonight and was named Woman of the Year by CBS This Morning.  She received a BS in chemistry from Xavier University in New Orleans, an MD from the University of Alabama, an MBA from Tulane University, and attended the Morehouse School of Medicine, completing her family medicine residency in Macon, Ga.

Vowing to be “a voice to improve our nation’s health for the future,” Benjamin has a personal story involving loss of loved ones to preventable illnesses, including her father to diabetes and high blood pressure, her older brother to an HIV-related illness and her mother to lung cancer after a life-time of smoking.

The founder and former CEO of the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in the fishing village of Bayou La Batre, Ala., Benjamin also has overcome significant obstacles to keep the clinic operating including heavy damages incurred from Hurricane George in 1998, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and a fire that burned the clinic to the ground several years ago.

Seating for the lecture is limited.  To reserve a space, email fdrlecture@roosevelt.edu or call 312-341-3838 for more information.