Noted Author, Orthopaedic Surgeon To Visit USA College of Medicine

Dr. Augustus A. White III, noted author and one of the foremost orthopaedic surgeons in the world, will visit the University of South Alabama College of Medicine on April 29-30, 2011.

Dr. White serves as professor of orthopaedic surgery and the Ellen and Melvin Gordon Professor of Medical Education at Harvard Medical School.

He will deliver a keynote address at the USA College of Medicine’s 25th year anniversary reunion celebration of the Biomedical Enrichment and Recruitment (BEAR) program, initiated to prepare, admit, and graduate more African-American medical students and diversify our medical student body.

This event will take place April 30, 2011, at the Downtown Renaissance Mobile Riverview Plaza Hotel from 8:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. During the past quarter century, 152 students have successfully completed the BEAR program, and 50 percent of those have graduated medical school.

In addition to the reunion, Dr. White will present a Grand Rounds lecture, titled “What Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Would Want Us to Know About Health Care Disparities,” on April 29, 2011, at 3:30 p.m. at the USA Medical Center, Richard’s Room.

The son of a doctor and teacher, Dr. White grew up in segregated Memphis, Tenn., during the Jim Crow era. Now 74, he has recently released a memoir on his life, entitled “Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care.” The book, a lifelong project, shows Dr. White’s passion for increasing ethnic diversity in the medical field and eliminating disparities in health care.

Dr. White completed his pre-medical studies at Brown University in 1957 and in 1961 was the first African American graduate of the Stanford University School of Medicine. Receiving his Ph.D. degree in orthopaedic biomechanics at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, he then worked as the first African American surgical resident at the Yale-New Haven Hospital. Dr. White also served in Vietnam as a captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, earning a Bronze Star. In addition, he was the first African American resident and surgery professor at Yale and the first black department head at Harvard’s teaching hospitals.

For 13 years, Dr. White served as chief of the orthopaedic surgery department at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. He also founded the academic orthopaedic program at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

For more information on the BEAR Reunion and Grand Rounds, call (251) 460-7313.