Ala Stanford | |
|---|---|
 Stanford in 2021 | |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Pennsylvania State University (MD) |
| Years active | 2006–present |
| Medical career | |
| Profession | Pediatric surgery |
Ala Stanford is an American pediatric surgeon. She is the founder of R.E.A.L. Concierge Medicine and the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium. She is also the first African-American female pediatric surgeon to be trained entirely in the United States.
Stanford was born in Germantown, Philadelphia to a teenage mother. A few years later, her father went off to college while her mother worked, leaving Stanford in charge of her younger brother. [1] Following high school, Stanford enrolled at Pennsylvania State University for her undergraduate degree and medical degree. Upon graduating from the Penn State University College of Medicine, Stanford finished her residency at SUNY Downstate Medical Center and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. [2] Stanford subsequently became the first African-American female pediatric surgeon to be trained entirely in the United States. [3]
Following her fellowship at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Stanford joined the faculty at Temple University in September 2006. A year later, she was promoted to director of the Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities at Temple University School of Medicine. [3] In this role, Stanford partnered with Allegheny West Foundation to improve the quality of life for area residents. [4] As a result of her efforts, Stanford was recognized with the Shirley Chisholm Award from the Philadelphia Congress of the National Congress of Black Women. [5] She eventually left Temple University to become the director of pediatric surgery at Abington Memorial Hospital. While there, she completed life-saving surgery on a baby from Haiti. [6] Through her hospital connections, Stanford also established Stanford Pediatric Surgery, LLC, It Takes Philly. Inc, and R.E.A.L Concierge Medicine. [7]
During the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Stanford recognized racism in medicine amongst the distribution of vaccines. As such, she left her role as a pediatric surgeon to work full time to address health disparities in Black communities during the pandemic. This led to the establishment of the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium (BDCC), which combined a group of around 200 healthcare professionals. [8] By February 2021, Stanford and the BDCC had vaccinated nearly 4,000 people of marginalized areas. [9] She was also recruited by Philadelphia sports teams, such as the Philadelphia Flyers, to encourage fans to get vaccinated. [10] As a result of her efforts, she was recognized by Forbes magazine as a woman over the age of 50 who was changing the world. [9] Stanford was also named one of Fortune Magazine 's 50 Greatest Leaders [11] and recognized by CNN as a Top 10 hero. [12] [13]
In October 2021, Stanford opened the Ala Stanford Center for Health Equity to offer primary care and behavioral health services to adults and children in North Philadelphia. [14] Later that month, she also rescinded her name from consideration to be Philadelphia's next health commissioner. [15]
Stanford married Byron Drayton on March 30, 2020. [22]
Sanjay Gupta is an American neurosurgeon, medical reporter, and writer. He serves as associate chief of the neurosurgery service at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, associate professor of neurosurgery at the Emory University School of Medicine, member of the National Academy of Medicine and American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is the chief medical correspondent for CNN.
Arkansas Children's Hospital (ACH) is a pediatric hospital with a Level I trauma center in Little Rock, Arkansas. It is among the largest in the United States, serving infants, children, teens, and young adults from birth to age 21. ACH is affiliated with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and serves as a teaching hospital with the UAMS College of Medicine's Department of Pediatrics. ACH staff consists of more than 505 physicians, 200 residents, and 4,400 support staff. The hospital includes 336 licensed beds, and offers three intensive care units. The campus spans 36 city blocks and has a floor space of over 1,200,000 square feet (110,000 m2).
The Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University (LKSOM), located on the Health Science Campus of Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is one of seven schools of medicine in Pennsylvania that confers the Doctor of Medicine degree. It also confers Ph.D and M.S. degrees in biomedical science, and offers a Narrative Medicine program.
Alexa Irene Canady is a retired American medical doctor specializing in pediatric neurosurgery. She was born in Lansing, Michigan and earned both her bachelors and medical degree from the University of Michigan. After completing her residency at the University of Minnesota in 1981, she became the first black woman to become a neurosurgeon. This came after Ruth Kerr Jakoby became the first American woman to be board certified in neurosurgery in 1961.
Marilyn Hughes Gaston is a physician and researcher. She was the first black woman to direct the Bureau of Primary Health Care in the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration. She is most famous for her work studying sickle cell disease (SCD).
Nadine Burke Harris is a Canadian-American pediatrician who was the Surgeon General of California between 2019 and 2022; she is the first person appointed to that position. She is known for linking adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress with harmful effects to health later in life. Hailed as a pioneer in the treatment of toxic stress, she is an advisory council member for the Clinton Foundation's "Too Small to Fail" campaign, and the founder and former chief executive officer of the Center for Youth Wellness. Her work was also featured in Paul Tough's book How Children Succeed.
Dr. Velma Scantlebury GCM also Velma Scantlebury-White is a Barbadian-born American transplant surgeon. She was the first Black woman transplant surgeon in the United States. She has received many honors in her career, having been named to both the "Best Doctors in America" and "Top Doctors in America" lists multiple times.
Mary Travis Bassett is an American physician and public health researcher who was the 17th Health Commissioner of the New York State Department of Health, being appointed to the position by Governor Kathy Hochul on September 29, 2021, until December 31, 2022. From 2014 to 2018, she was the commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Bassett is the Director of the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University and the FXB Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health. She is also an associate professor of clinical epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
Terri H. Finkel is an American pediatric rheumatologist and immunologist who is the Children's Foundation of Memphis Endowed Chair and tenured professor of pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Previously, she was the pediatrician-in-chief, chair of pediatrics and chief scientific officer at Nemours Children's Hospital. She is known for her research into autoimmunity, AIDS, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and cancer. Her work has been recognized in more than 200 publications, 10 U.S. patents, and 4 licensed technologies. Finkel has been placed in the top one percent of American pediatric rheumatologists by U.S. News & World Report. Her numerous honors include being named among America's Top Doctors by Castle Connolly every year since 2011 and induction into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1996.
Dean Winslow is an American physician, academic, and retired United States Air Force colonel. He had been nominated by President Donald Trump to become the next Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, but he withdrew his nomination in December 2017 after it was put on indefinite hold. He is Professor and former Vice Chair of Medicine at Stanford University. He previously served as Chair of the Department of Medicine and Chief of the Division of AIDS Medicine at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. In the Air Force, he deployed twice to Afghanistan and four times to Iraq as a flight surgeon supporting combat operations in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Céline R. Gounder is an American physician and medical journalist who specializes in infectious diseases and global health. She was a member of the COVID-19 Advisory Board transition team of then-incoming U.S. president Joe Biden. In 2022, she joined the Kaiser Family Foundation as senior fellow and editor-at-large for public health at Kaiser Health News.
Simone Melissa Gold is an American doctor and anti-vaccine activist. She is the founder of America's Frontline Doctors, a right-wing political organization known for spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic. Before her arrest and guilty plea for participating in the 2021 United States Capitol attack, she had gained attention when a video of an America's Frontline Doctors press conference in front of the US Supreme Court Building went viral in July 2020. During the press conference, she touted the supposed benefits of hydroxychloroquine, despite evidence that it is ineffective as a COVID-19 treatment and can carry significant risks.
Folakemi Titilayo Odedina is a Nigerian-born scientist and professor of pharmacy and medicine at the University of Florida. She is the principal investigator for the Prostate Cancer Transatlantic Consortium (CaPTC), a clinical research group using genomic science and environmental etiology to exploring disproportionate burden of prostate cancer among Black men funded by the NCI. She is a member of American Cancer Society's National Prostate Cancer Disparities Advisory Team.
Dinee Collings Simpson is an American surgeon. She is an assistant professor of surgery in the Division of Organ Transplantation at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and founding director of the Northwestern Medicine African American Transplant Access Program. As of 2019, she is the only female, African-American organ transplant surgeon in Chicago.
Chaniece Wallace, a black woman and physician, died at 30 years of age from complications of pregnancy two days after the birth of her daughter. Her death is seen as preventable and is viewed in the context of high rates of maternal mortality in the United States, particularly among the African American population. It is cited as an example in medical and scholarly publications to call for improved health outcomes in the black U.S. population. Wallace died despite several factors seen as protective: she was "highly educated, employed as a health care practitioner, had access to health care, and had a supportive family." Wallace was a fourth year pediatric chief resident at the Indiana University School of Medicine and was working at Riley Children's Health Hospital at the time of her death.
On December 20, 2020, the American physician Susan Grace Moore died in Carmel, Indiana, from complications related to COVID-19. In the weeks preceding her death, Moore, who was black, had shared concerns that her symptoms were not being taken seriously by white medical professionals.
Anna Banerji M.D., O. Ont. is a Toronto infectious disease doctor, tropical disease specialist, pediatrician, public health specialist, academic, and activist. She is the founder and chair of both the North American Refugee Health Conference in Canada and the Indigenous Health Conference, and the co-founder of the Society of Refugee Healthcare Providers. She was awarded the Dr Peter Bryce Henderson for her advocacy for Indigenous children.
Scott Andrew Rivkees is an American physician-scientist and pediatric endocrinologist, who served as State Surgeon General and Secretary of Health of Florida from June 2019 to September 2021. The majority of Rivkees' tenure coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fatima Cody Stanford is an American obesity medicine physician, internist, and pediatrician and an associate professor of medicine and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. She is one of the most highly cited scientists in the field of obesity. She is recognized for shifting the global perception of obesity as a chronic disease.
Tara Olive Henderson is an American pediatric oncologist. As the Arthur and Marian Edelstein Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, she is also the Director of the Childhood Cancer Survivor Center, Director of Survivorship at the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center, and chief of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology at the University of Chicago.