Black Excellence: Georges Benjamin

Tariq El-Amin 00:01     

Welcome to “Black Excellence” at UIC.     

The Office of Student Success and Belonging, with Dr. Aisha El-Amin.      

Recording of Dr. Martin Luther King 00:09     

[Applause] Believe in yourself and believe that you’re somebody.     

Clips from 1995 movie “Panther” 00:17     

His intention is that we study and master a bunch of different things.    
Why are you here?      
Study and master a bunch of different things.    
I’m proud to introduce our new Minister of Information.    

Aisha El-Amin 00:26     

I’m Dr. Aisha El-Amin.     

Tariq El-Amin 00:29     

Welcome to “Black Excellence.”  

Georges Benjamin  0:32   

Look, I think at the end of the day, I want to be known as being honest, doing what I say I’m going to do, and fair, but I’ve tried to always walk into a room with any politician with an open mind. My job is to try to help them solve their problem. 

Aisha El-Amin  0:51   

In this episode of the Black Excellence podcast, we speak with one of the most influential voices in health care, Chicago native and UIC College of Medicine grad, Dr. Georges Benjamin. Dr. Benjamin’s career traverses across a multitude of roles, from military service to public health leadership, with one constant: He is a true leader and a difference maker in every space. Dr. Benjamin begins today’s episode sharing about how his path unfolded and what brought him to where he is today.  

Georges Benjamin  1:23   

So, I had absolutely no interest in being a physician. Wasn’t on my radar screen. I went to medical school to get a good basic science background to do molecular genetic research, which was pretty revolutionary, if you think about the fact that I was in in college in the early ’70s. And a friend of mine said, you know, this will give you a good basic science background to do that kind of work. And I looked into it, I said, that’s great. So that’s why I went to medical school. But when I got there, I fell in love with clinical medicine, and you know, the rest is history, in terms of that. 

I had an Army scholarship to med school, so that’s why I went into the Army, although I had done ROTC and Navy ROTC in college, and so I was, I was probably fit for a military career. At some point, I did my residency in internal medicine, actually during my medical school, I fell in love with emergency medicine, which was, of course, a brand-new specialty. And I actually happened to be an intern in the ER the day the army opened up his first emergency medicine residency. So, I was on the ground floor of Army emergency medicine as a specialty of medicine, and my faculty advisor happened to be the guy who created all the Army emergency medicine training programs.

So whatever the puppeteer that was organizing my career got me into the right place, got me to the right people. And so when I finished my internal medicine residency, I got assigned to one of the Army’s emergency medicine residency programs as faculty. And in those days before, there were only two or three residency programs in the whole country, in the civilian world, two, not many. And so every program had to have an intern as a surrogate and a pediatrician. So, I was a ped-internist for the training program, totally immersed in emergency medicine. I did some internal medicine at Madigan Army Medical Center, where the training program was, and I was there for two years, and then I got reassigned to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to run the emergency department.  

Why me? Because the emergency department was a program within the Department of Medicine at Walter Reed. So, they sold me as an internist with a subspecialty of emergency medicine, because Walter Reed, everybody’s a specialist or a subspecialist. So I was their super-subspecialist and emergency, all things emergency, and I ran worldwide the Army’s resuscitated medicine programs, ACLs, BLS, trauma life support programs, all those. I ran those out of the military medical school, the Uniformed Services University for the health sciences, as well as being chief at the ER at Walter Reed.  

And then I got out of the Army after nine years of service, and went to this city hospital, at DC General Hospital, when D.C. had on city hospital as chief of community medicine and ambulatory care, which is a big outpatient clinic with the ER trauma center, the hospital based clinics, I was kind of the administrator for all the hospital based ambulatory care services, and I was there, but about two and a half years when my phone rang and the mayor was on the other end of the phone, and he said, “Have I got a job for you?” And I ended up being the city health commissioner for almost two years. The first mayor that hired me was Marion Barry. And then Sharon Pratt Kelly came on board as a new mayor. Marion didn’t run again, and so I was with Sharon for about 10 months. Mayor Kelly was good mayor, but she wanted her own person as the EMS as the health commissioner.  

So I left, went out and practiced emergency medicine for about two and a half years, and did a bunch of just stuff, health policy work with the American College of Emergency Physicians, did some consulting, wrote algorithms for managed care plans to sort people before you know, they went to the went to the hospital, and then I got a phone call one night, and it was a mayor, Mayor Kelly’s office saying, “Hey, we’d like you to come back to the city, but this time to be Deputy Fire Chief and run the EMS system.” So, I did that for about 10 months now, five months with her, and then she lost the reelection to Marion Barry. He came back as mayor. 

 So, five months with Sharon, five months with Marion, and then I got an offer to apply for the deputy job for the health department in Maryland at the state. And eventually got that job, and I ended up being the deputy health officer in Maryland for four years. And then when my boss left, I became the State Health Secretary. And then, you know, new governor. Governor was termed out, Governor Glendening. So new governor, new job. And then I went to APHA, which was supposed to be, you know, couple years until I figured out what I wanted to do when I grew up. And I’ve been there 23 years. That’s my story.  

Aisha El-Amin  6:45   

Wow. I mean, you summed it up, but that’s, there’s a lot. There’s so much we could probably talk for years just about your experience in the military. First of all, thank you for your service. I am a federal Army veteran as a military police officer. And we have, you know, some of our alums, some of our students, some students that are looking at you know what their trajectory should be. What was the difference between your military experience as a physician and all the things that you did outside the military, and did that help prepare you in a different way? 

Georges Benjamin  7:20   

So other than wearing a uniform, my day in the military was the same as anybody practicing in an academic medical center, because my experience, although was pretty much all academic medical centers, and at least all three of them were considered pretty good ones. I mean, the Brooke Army Medical Center and Walter Reed Medical Center were the Army’s top two academic centers. It’s like, you know, think Mass General, think Mayo Clinic, think Cleveland Clinic. You know, same caliber of stuff. I was on the faculty of the medical school, so my life was just like any traditional academic medical center.  

Now, what was different? What was different was the command structure, people actually do what you tell them to do. You had to. You know, in those days, they were really pushing very hard to rethink military medicine and looking at the health care experience in Vietnam, where many, many people died. It was often said that half the people died, died from preventable injuries. They bled to death  on the battlefield, unless you were killed by right away, immediately, then you bled to death. And so they were looking at ways they could get medical care further up front. And they were rethinking a whole range of new services and where they could do more sophisticated stuff: telemedicine, robotic medicine, all that kind of stuff was being experimented on. And in many ways, the emergency medicine program for the tip of the sphere, for some of that, because a lot of those guys and women were in in some of them were in combat roles. They were out front with the troops, out in the front line, providing medical care very early front end. And, you know, so it was, it was a very interesting experience. 

 I think the other experience. I think the other thing, of course, is, I mean, we did research. Military had its own research program. So there were, there were people doing all kinds of research. The one thing that was interesting was HIV/AIDS was just being discovered. And of course, like the rest of the world, HIV/AIDS was not foreign to the military. We had people who were gay. Of course, in those days, if you were gay, you were in the closet. And we also, of course, had issues around blood. And you know, before we knew that you could get HIV/AIDS through blood transfusions. You know, there were people who got infected through blood transfusions. So, there was a whole range of specialized programs put in place to screen people for HIV/AIDS. The military is a master screener. They screen for everything and genetic disorders, you know, sickle cell anemia, sickle cell trait, whole range of disease. And of course, you’re also protected from all kinds of things. You get all kinds of vaccinations that you may not normally get in the real world. And you know, being, for example, an infectious disease doc in the military, is an amazing experience. I wish I had understood that early on I might have considered infectious diseases, because you got to go to places all over the world just to check out the risk of soldiers when they go into new environments.  

You know, the people talk about the military people being injured in war and killed in war. But the most common reason people out of taking off of duty are medical reasons. You know, infection, sunburn, digestive disorders, infectious diseases, including sexually transmitted diseases, skin disorders. And then, of course, the military has a commitment to the family. So one of the things that you learn very early on is every military position sees themselves as a public health doc, even if they may not call themselves, that they think about everything that they do, and the concept of a holistic approach to health, the soldier, their family, the environment which they’re in, and the civilians that support the military. So, you think very differently about every problem that you’re dealing with, and by the way, you also do administration very early on part of that process. 

Aisha El-Amin  12:06   

So tell me, how has the Chicago, your Chicago roots and your MD earned from UIC College of Medicine impacted who you are and kind of the trajectory that you’ve been on? 

Georges Benjamin  12:21   

Well, you know, the University of Illinois has more — other than Meharry and Howard — I believe is number three in terms of number of African American students. So the fact that I had just an enormous number of colleagues who look like me, my experience at University of Illinois was atypical for other non-HBCU schools. But we also had a different experience, because that year, in those early days of that program, which I know the program has changed a lot, but we saw patients our first year. We basically did all the basic sciences in one year. And we were expected to take our comp exams and the national board exams after the first year.  

So, it was a very different experience. So I got to see patients as a medical student in my first year, which is how I fell in love with emergency medicine, because I got to hang out in the emergency department. So, when I came to my second-year experience at UIC campus, I had already done almost every technical procedure you could think of that was done as an outpatient. I had already done central lines and already put in IVs. I put in catheters, all the Scud procedures that medical students had to do. I had already done them for about, you know, almost a whole year of my first year. And so I ended up being the guy who, you know, nobody else, to get an IV and call, you call Georges. And just because, you know, I had that year of experience, and I carried that through my experience, I was always the technical guy in terms of being able to do things. And I was, you know, surgery wasn’t my thing, but emergency medicine kind of just hit the spot. 

Aisha El-Amin  14:16   

Are you a native Chicagoan? 

Georges Benjamin  14:19   

Oh, yeah. I grew up in Chicago. Yeah, I was born in Chicago and lived on the far South Side. My mom was as a teacher at Calumet High School. I went to Lindblom High School. And my family, my youngest brother had sickle cell anemia, and we have sickle cell trait in my family, so we will actually study through Michael Reese hospital very early on, as they were trying to understand a lot more about sickle cell anemia. So, I spent my whole childhood in many ways, as a research subject. 

Aisha El-Amin  14:59   

Hmm. Did that influence you wanting to go into the medical field?  

Georges Benjamin  15:03   

You think, no, no. Go into science, you know? But like a lot of kids, I kicked around, you know, botany, the only thing I really didn’t get into was insects. I couldn’t get in the insects. But I thought about veterinary school and being a botanist and being a chemist. I was terrible at physics. I really wanted, I love physics, the idea of physics, but it just was too theoretical for me. It was my worst subject. But I love biochemistry, and I just, you know, fell in absolute love with this whole concept of this of DNA and RNA, and just fell in love with it.  

Aisha El-Amin  15:48   

You talk about, kind of this political arm of your career where mayors are calling you to be in charge, and how that works. Can you tell me how you got into kind of the political sphere as part of the medical space? 

Georges Benjamin  16:06   

Yeah. Well, you know, as I said, you know, in the Army, you get, you get to be a manager pretty early. So right out of my residency, I’m now managing parts of the emergency department, like mostly our docs, most, most emergency medicine programs, everybody who’s part of the group has some job as quality assurance or administration of the residents or teaching or EMS. So, you end up very early on in emergency medicine doing a lot of administrative stuff. And then the army amplifies that, because you’re an officer, and you always get some duty. And so being in charge became something I did very early on.  

In fact, him as a resident, I ran the flu clinic. The residents had to do something, so I got tasked to run the flu clinic every year, and it was interesting. And then when I became a faculty, came in attending, I ran a hypertension clinic, and then I became the manager of the whole outpatient program, non-emergent. We had, you know, like most, ER, we had a lot of walk-ins, a lot of people that had unappointed care. But we also had a primary care practice of nurse practitioners and civilian physicians who were involved. So, I got very early on involved in that. And, you know, administration, you end up with administrative politics. And then, of course, when you come to D.C., you’re steeped in the politics, you know. And it turns out, I fell in love with the politics of, you know, here in D.C., and just found myself, in many ways, as immersed in the decision making because of the kinds of jobs I had involved me engaging with policymakers on, you know, the full spectrum of the political aisle. 

The other thing that happened is, remember, I said, when I left D.C. as a health officer and went to practice emergency medicine. One of the things I did at for the American College of Emergency Physicians, when I became one of their late lobbyists. So I was, because we were in D.C., we were the guys they sent to the Hill to talk to members of Congress about emergency medicine issues. And so our chapter in the D.C. metropolitan area, we often were the folks that went to those visits, and I was often the guy that they gave the check to the campaign check. I got to go to receptions and rub elbows with the big shots and delivered a campaign check to their campaigning. 

Aisha El-Amin  18:48   

Nice, that’s not a bad job there.  

Georges Benjamin  18:51   

Yeah, we don’t get to do that, you know, public health, we don’t have campaign checks, so we don’t get to do that. But, you know, we don’t have that kind of money. But it was interesting. 

Aisha El-Amin  19:01   

So, you were voted among the 100 most influential people in health care. So, as you look at your career, what do you hope your primary influence would be for those that are inspired by your story? 

Georges Benjamin  19:16   

Look, I think at the end of the day, I want to be known as being honest. Doing what I say I’m going to do, and fair. And, you know, people say we shouldn’t be political. That’s nonsense. We’re doing policy. Policy is all about politics. But what you can try to not be as partisan and negative about it, but I’ve tried to always walk into a room with any politician with an open mind. My job is to try to help them solve their problem and or solve a problem, and then hopefully our problems can become, you know, the same. We may have different views on how we solve those problems, but I do think it’s important that we try to solve those problems.  

So when I was in D.C., we didn’t have a lot of Republican legislators in D.C. City Council people, but I went to see them all the time. And in Maryland, I spent a lot of time in more conservative parts of the district, by the way, Democrats that were conservative, Republicans that were conservative, Republicans that tended to be more liberal, but more closet liberals, in many cases. But I spent a lot of time talking with them and just trying to understand their views and then try again. Everybody had my cell phone number, and if they called and they needed something, and I could deliver it fine. And by building those relationships, one of the things I discovered was it was easy for me to deliver good news, and was easy even easier for me to deliver bad news, because they knew I wasn’t coming with an agenda. I was coming to say, look, this is what the governor needs. This is what the governor expects me to message the governor, for me to deliver to you. This is what we’re proposing to do. And they would sometimes, you know, I mean, I would get a call saying, you know, you’re going to have a hearing today, and we’re going to beat you up, you know that, right? Okay, and then I go there and take my whipping, and then afterwards, you know, we go out and have dinner. 

Aisha El-Amin  21:26   

Wow, yeah. So, I’ll end with a few sentence stems, if you could finish the sentence for me: Every young person entering into UIC College of Medicine should be prepared to… 

Georges Benjamin  21:48   

Learn as much as they possibly can learn, become the best physician that they can possibly be, as a benchmark, as a core function. That’s what everybody should be, the best doc they can be. 

Aisha El-Amin  21:59   

I love it. Here’s another: there are important things that you should know if you’re entering into emergency medicine. This is the top one… 

Georges Benjamin  22:15   

Oh, the top one is that every patient sees you as a stranger, and that your most important thing is for you to build rapport with them, and you have about two minutes to do so. 

Aisha El-Amin  22:30   

And our last one: I am most inspired by… 

Georges Benjamin 

My grandkids.  

Aisha El-Amin 

You have to tell me, how many grandkids do you have? 

Georges Benjamin  22:39   

I have three, yeah, 13, 11 and 8. I believe, 7 or 8. 

Aisha El-Amin  22:45   

Wow, wow. Dr. Benjamin, you have inspired so many people. You have done phenomenal work throughout your career, and I know you’re still doing phenomenal work. So, thank you for spending time with us today. Thank you for all of your dedicated work in the many, many lives that not only you saved, but also inspired and impacted.   

Georges Benjamin  23:06   

Thank you very much. You have a wonderful day. 

Announcer  23:08   

Thanks for joining us. Find more inspiring and informative conversations with UIC alum, faculty and staff at Black resources.uic.edu, that’s black resources.uic.edu.