Feb. 8, 2015
Autobiography of Moorehouse Medical School Founder Wins NAACP Image Award
Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Sullivan Alliance
(TriceEdneyWire.com) – The autobiography of one of the nation’s most admired public health and educational leaders has won an NAACP Image Award.
Authored by Louis W. Sullivan, M.D. (with David Chanoff), and published by the University of Georgia Press, “Breaking Ground: My Life in Medicine” chronicles Sullivan’s rise from a childhood in the Jim Crow South to become a physician, founding dean of Morehouse School of Medicine - the first predominantly Black medical school established in the 20th Century -- and to serve as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the Cabinet of President George H.W. Bush from 1989-1993.
The annual NAACP Image Awards celebrates the accomplishments of people of color in literature, film, television, and music and also honors individuals or groups who promote social justice through creative endeavors.
Winners in the 46th NAACP Image Awards literary categories were announced at a gala dinner in Pasadena, Calif. Thursday, February 5.
Louis W. Sullivan, M.D., is chairman of the board of the National Health Museum in Atlanta, which goal is to improve the health of Americans by enhancing health literacy and advancing healthy behaviors. He also is chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Sullivan Alliance to Transform the Health Professions -- a national non-profit organization with a community-focused agenda to diversify and transform health professions’ education and health delivery systems.
As Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Sullivan worked to improve the health and health behavior of Americans including (1) leading the effort to increase the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget from $8.0 billion in 1989 to $13.1 billion in 1993; (2) establishing at NIH, the Office of Research on Minority Health, which has become the Institute for Research on Minority Health and Health Disparities; (3) inaugurating the Women’s Health Research Program at NIH; (4) the introduction of a new, improved Food and Drug Administration food label; (5) the release of Healthy People 2000, a guide for improved health promotion/disease prevention activities; (6) educating the public regarding the health dangers from tobacco use; (7) leading the successful effort to prevent the introduction of “Uptown,” a non-filtered, mentholated cigarette; (8) inaugurating a $100 million minority male health and injury prevention initiative; and (9) implementing greater gender and ethnic diversity in senior positions of
Dr. and Mrs. E. Ginger Sullivan are sponsors of The Sullivan 5K Run/Walk for Health & Fitness on Martha’s Vineyard. Now in its 26th year, the popular event has raised more than $400,000 to benefit Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.
Dr. Sullivan is the recipient of more than 60 honorary degrees, including an honorary doctor of medicine degree from the University of Pretoria in South Africa. He is also the author of The Morehouse Mystique: Becoming a Doctor at the Nation’s Newest African American Medical School (with Marybeth Gasman, 2012, Johns Hopkins University Press).