Obama Names Regina Benjamin U.S. Surgeon General

Regina Benjamin is an African American doctor (who graduated from Morehouse School of Medicine) who won a $500,000 McCarthu genius grant in 2008 and was nominated by President Obama to become Surgeon General of the United States on July 13, 2009.

Dr. Benjamin first came to national attention as the first Black woman to be elected to the Board of Governors of the American Medical Association in 1995. She was also in the media when her Alabama-based health clinic was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Rod 2.0 notes that in her speech where Obama nominated her, Dr. Benjamin mentioned that her only sibling, an older brother died of HIV-related complications at age 44:

Public health issues are very personal to me. My father died with diabetes and hypertension. My older brother, and only sibling, died at age 44 of HIV-related illness. My mother died of lung cancer, because as a young girl, she wanted to smoke just like her twin brother could. My Uncle Buddy, my mother's twin, who's one of the few surviving black World War II prisoners of war, is at home right now, on oxygen, struggling for each breath because of the years of smoking.

As MadProfessah.com has noted multiple times, AIDS is a huge issue in the Black community and it is significant that Obama's Surgeon General nominee has a personal understanfing of the impact of HIV/AIDS on African Americans.