Georges C. Benjamin, MD ’78
Physician (Alumnus)
Physician, Health Policy, Executive Director, American Public Health Association
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The Department of Medicine Inclusion Council honors and celebrates the accomplishments of Georges C. Benjamin, MD, ‘78. Dr. Benjamin is a 2008 recipient of the University of Illinois College of Medicine Distinguished Alumnus Award and honored with the UIC Alumni Association Achievement Award in 2024, Dr. Benjamin was named one of the top 25 minority executives in health care by Modern Healthcare Magazine in 2008, 2014 and 2016. He was voted among the 100 most influential people in health care from 2007–2018 and in 2021–2022.
Georges C. Benjamin was born and raised in Chicago and earned a B.S. from the Illinois Institute of Technology, and an M.D. from the University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine. Benjamin fell in love with emergency medicine at UIC while doing clinical rotations and helping underserved patients at teaching hospitals around the city. He says, “That foundational experience taught me to really listen to patients.”
An established administrator, author and orator, Dr. Benjamin started his medical career as a military physician in 1978 at the Brooke Army Medical Center. In 1981, he was assigned to the Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Washington, where he managed a 72,000-patient visit ambulatory care service as chief of the Acute Illness Clinic and was faculty and an attending physician within the Department of Emergency Medicine. He later served as chief of emergency medicine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. After leaving the Army, Dr. Benjamin chaired the Department of Community Health and Ambulatory Care at the District of Columbia General Hospital. He was promoted to acting commissioner for public health for the District of Columbia and became secretary of health in Maryland in April 1999, following four years as its deputy secretary for public health services. As secretary, Benjamin oversaw the expansion and improvement of the state’s Medicaid program.
Dr. Benjamin is board-certified in internal medicine and a master of the American College of Physicians, a fellow and active member of the National Academy of Public Administration, a fellow emeritus of the American College of Emergency Physicians, an honorary fellow of the Faculty of Public Health and an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health
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He is also an active member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. His academic career has included teaching and policy research as well as academic program development and management. Dr. Benjamin has combined his practice and academic experience as an emergency physician with public health to become one of the nation’s experts in public health emergency preparedness.
As executive director of American Public Health Association (APHA) since 2002, Dr. Benjamin also serves as publisher of the nonprofit’s monthly publication, The Nation’s Health, the association’s official newspaper, and the American Journal of Public Health, the profession’s premier scientific publication. He is the author of more than 200 scientific articles and book chapters. His recent book Public Health Under Siege: Improving Policy in Turbulent Times explores the impact of policy on our nation’s health and offers specific actions to improve health and extend life expectancy. He is also the author of The Quest for Health Reform: A Satirical History, an exposé of the nearly 100-year quest to ensure quality affordable health coverage for all, using political cartoons.
He serves on the boards of many nonprofit organizations including Research!America, the Truth Initiative, the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA, the Environmental Defense Fund and Ceres. Dr. Benjamin is also a former member of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, which advises the president on how best to assure the security of the nation’s critical infrastructure. In 2023, Washingtonian Magazine voted Dr. Benjamin one of the 500 most influential people shaping health policy.