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Posted 9/16/97
President Bill Clinton has nominated David Satcher, a double alumnus of CWRU, for the positions of Surgeon General and assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services. The nomination came September 12 in an early-afternoon ceremony at the White House.
If the U.S. Senate confirms his appointment, Satcher would become only the second person to hold both posts. (The first was in the Carter administration.)
"Over the past three decades of serving the health needs of our nation, David Satcher has earned the highest respect of public health officials around the nation, and indeed, all around the world," Clinton said, according to a White House transcript of the nomination ceremony.
"No one is better qualified to be America's doctor; no one is better qualified to be the nation's leading voice for all of us. And I am grateful that he is willing to serve," Clinton continued.
Satcher has been director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta and administrator of the Agency of Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
With an annual budget of more than $2.5 billion, the CDC has six centers, four programs offices, and one institute staffed by a combined 7,000 people. CDC's primary focus is a healthy world through prevention.
Under Satcher's direction, the CDC has spearheaded initiatives that have increased childhood immunization rates, upgraded the nation's capability to respond to emerging infectious disease, and laid the groundwork for an Early Warning System to detect and prevent food-borne illnesses.
The center has also placed a greater emphasis on prevention programs, including a comprehensive breast and cervical cancer screening program which has expanded from 18 to all 50 states.
"I want to be the Surgeon General who reaches our citizens with cutting-edge technology and plain, old-fashioned straight talk," Satcher said during his nomination ceremony.
"As the assistant secretary for health and the Surgeon General, I want to take the best science in the world and place it firmly within the grasp of all Americans," he continued. "I want to engage our citizens in an ongoing conversation about physical activity, about good nutrition, responsible behavior, and other passports to good health and long life."
Satcher was the first African-American to receive both an M.D. and Ph.D. from CWRU. He completed both degrees in 1970, accompanied by election to the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honorary society. His bachelor's degree came in 1963 from Morehouse College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Before becoming CDC director, Satcher had been president of Meharry Medical College in Nashville since 1982. He was an assistant professor at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine, and developed and chaired the Department of Family Medicine at the King/Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles. He also was an interim dean at Drew and directed its Sickle Cell Center.
In 1996 Satcher received a Dr. Nathan B. Davis Award from the American Medical Association for outstanding public service to advance public health. Also among his recent honors was receiving the Surgeon General's Medallion for significant and noteworthy contributions to the health of the nation.
He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. That year he was also appointed to the Council of Graduate Medical Education, which reports to Congress and the HHS secretary, and he chaired the council until receiving his CDC appointment.
At CWRU, Satcher served on the Board of Trustees from 1980-85, was the School of Medicine's commencement speaker in 1990, and received the 1995 Special Board of Trustees Service Award from the Medical Alumni Association.
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