Cora LeEthel Christian was the first native woman of the U.S. Virgin Islands to earn a medical degree, and is a medical administrator in the U.S Virgin Islands. [1]
Christian was born on Saint Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and graduated first in her high school class. [2]
Christian earned her medical degree from Jefferson Medical College in 1971, where she was the first African-American female graduate. [3] After her degree, she completed a residency in Family Practice at Howard University Medical Center and her Master’s in Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. [1]
After completing her medical education Christian returned to the Virgin Islands, working as an emergency room doctor in Frederiksted, St. Croix. [1] In 1977 she was appointed Assistant Commissioner of Health for the Virgin Islands, [4] which office she held for the following 15 years. [1] In 1977 she also founded the Virgin Islands Medical Institute (VIMI), the Quality Improvement Organization for Medicare hospitals in the U.S. Virgin Islands. [5] [6]
Christian became the Medical Director of the petroleum refinery Hovensa in 1991 and was its Chief Medical Consultant until the company's closure in 2012. [1]
Christian received the American Academy of Family Physicians Humanitarian Award in 2013, [6] served on the National Board of the AARP, [7] and was recognized by U.S. Virgin Islands' Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives Donna Christian-Christensen on the floor of the 113th U.S. Congress. [1]
William Harrison Frist is an American physician, businessman, conservationist and policymaker who served as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 1995 to 2007. A member of the Republican Party, he also served as Senate Majority Leader from 2003 to 2007. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Frist studied government and health care policy at Princeton University and earned a Doctor of Medicine degree from Harvard Medical School. He trained as a cardiothoracic transplant surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital and Stanford University School of Medicine, and later founded the Vanderbilt Transplant Center. In 1994, he defeated incumbent Democratic Senator Jim Sasser.
The American Medical Association (AMA) is a professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students. Founded in 1847, it is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Membership was 271,660 in 2022.
Donna Marie Christian-Christensen, formerly Donna Christian-Green, is an American physician and politician. She served as the 4th elected non-voting Delegate from the United States Virgin Islands's at-large district to the United States House of Representatives from 1997 until 2015.
The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, also called the Medicare Modernization Act or MMA, is a federal law of the United States, enacted in 2003. It produced the largest overhaul of Medicare in the public health program's 38-year history.
AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons, is an interest group in the United States focusing on issues affecting those over the age of fifty. The organization, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C., said it had more than 38 million members as of 2018. The magazine and bulletin it sends to its members are the two largest-circulation publications in the United States.
Nancy Elizabeth Lee Johnson is an American lobbyist and politician from the state of Connecticut. Johnson was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1983 to 2007, representing the 6th district and later the 5th District after reapportionment.
Thomas William Hardwick was an American politician from the U.S. state of Georgia who served as governor of Georgia, a United States Senator from Georgia, a member of the United States House of Representatives from Georgia, and a member of the Georgia House of Representatives.
The Medicare for All Act, also known as the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act or United States National Health Care Act, is a bill first introduced in the United States House of Representatives by Representative John Conyers (D-MI) in 2003, with 38 co-sponsors. In 2019, the original 16-year-old proposal was renumbered, and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) introduced a broadly similar, but more detailed, bill, HR 1384, in the 116th Congress. As of November 3, 2019, it had 116 co-sponsors still in the House at the time, or 49.8% of House Democrats.
The Alliance for Retired Americans (ARA) is a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization and nonpartisan organization of retired trade union members affiliated with the AFL-CIO, which founded it in 2001. The group's membership also includes non-union, community-based activists. Its predecessor organization was known as the National Council of Senior Citizens (NCSC).
Thomas Jefferson University's notable alumni include:
The presence of women in medicine, particularly in the practicing fields of surgery and as physicians, has been traced to the earliest of history. Women have historically had lower participation levels in medical fields compared to men with occupancy rates varying by race, socioeconomic status, and geography.
Dorcas Ruth Hardy Spagnolo was an American healthcare specialist. She served as the 10th Commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) from 1986 to 1989. She was the first woman to serve as SSA Commissioner. Hardy held conservative views and remained active in politics after her tenure.
Nancy Adams Collins is an American politician in the Mississippi State Senate.
Stacey Elizabeth Plaskett is an American politician and attorney. She is a non-voting delegate to the United States House of Representatives from the United States Virgin Islands' (USVI) at-large congressional district, since 2015. Plaskett has practiced law in New York City, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Ruby M. Rouss was an American citizen born on Saint Croix in the US Virgin Islands. Her career was marked by a series of firsts. She was the first Virgin Islander in the Women's Army Corps (WAC), first African-American woman to serve on General Eisenhower’s staff, and first black woman assigned as a permanent staff of Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. After a 20-year military career, she retired from service and became the first woman parole officer in St. Croix. In 1973, she was elected as one of the first women to serve in the Virgin Island's legislature. In 1981, Rouss served as the first female President of the Virgin Islands Legislature, becoming the first black woman to lead a legislature in the United States. She was elected to serve a second presidency of the Senate in 1987 and died the following year. Posthumously, she was inducted into the Virgin Island's Women's Hall of Fame and a housing project in St. Croix was renamed in her honor.
Mariannette Jane Miller-Meeks is an American physician and politician serving as a U.S. representative since 2021, representing Iowa's 1st congressional district. Her district, numbered as the 2nd district in her first term, includes most of Iowa's southeastern quadrant, including Davenport, Bettendorf, Burlington, and Iowa City. A member of the Republican Party, Miller-Meeks served as Iowa state senator for the 41st district from 2019 to 2021.
Cora is a given name with multiple origins. It was used by James Fenimore Cooper for a character in his 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans. It is today most commonly viewed as a variant name derived from the Ancient Greek Κόρη (Kórē), an epithet of the Greek goddess Persephone. Alternatively, but rarely, it may be rooted in the Gaelic cora, the comparative of cóir, meaning just, honest, virtuous or good. Variant forms of this name include Kora and Korra.
Hobart Ansteth Reimann (1897–1986) was an American virologist and physician. Reimann made contributions to medicine with his 1938 landmark article on atypical pneumonia ; and articles on periodic disease and the common cold (1948). He was active in the testing of streptomycin against typhoid, with "the first publicly reported successful experiments."
Myra Smith Kearse was an American physician and community leader in New Jersey.