Volume 9 | Issue 1
February 2021
The Latest News and Updates from the SED

Dear Colleagues:

Here we are again at the start of another New Year.

We continue our historical summary of past AMA Presidents from current SED States. The pictures and vignettes, from the AMA archives and Karen Foy’s research, are a fascinating look both into our AMA past and into the changes in the faces of American Medicine.   

We appreciate our current richness of diversity in AMA membership and leadership. The current succession of female Presidents would have been unheard of in these historical eras.

We continue the COVID-19 resource links and the Beyond the Stethoscope column. Remember, we solicit column contributions from all of you.

We include a special link to the noteworthy and nationally recognized charity of SED Board member Dr. Omar Atiq of Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

Have a better 2021. We must expect to see each other again in November.

Claudette Dalton, MD, Chair (VA)
John Poole, MD, Chair-elect (NJ)
Bill Clark, MD, Immediate Past Chair (GA)
Clay Hays, MD, Vice Chair (MS)
Stephen Imbeau, MD, SED Newsletter Editor (SC)

MEMBERS FROM SOUTHEAST WHO HAVE SERVED AS AMA PRESIDENT

Since the founding of the AMA in 1847, many members of our Southeastern Delegation have served as President. Here we highlight some of them.

Click on each picture for a bio and the links to read more information.


James Moultrie, Jr., M.D.
South Carolina
5th President of the AMA - 1851
Beverly R. Wellford, M.D.
Virginia
6th President of the AMA - 1852
Paul F. Eve, MD
Georgia
11th President of the AMA - 1857
Harvey Lindsly, MD
District of Columbia
12th President of the AMA - 1858

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Henry M. Miller, MD
Kentucky
13th President of the AMA


This cancer doctor wiped out more than $600,000 in medical debt for his former patients
(CNN) An act of kindness by an Arkansas doctor is helping his former patients face the new year with less debt. Dr. Omar T. Atiq voided more than $650,000 of unpaid medical bills for those once under his care.

"If this gave them a little bit of assistance then I am grateful to have had the opportunity to do so," the oncologist tells CNN. "There has always been an element of doubt in my mind about our fellow citizens, fellow human beings having to worry about paying for services when they are sick," the doctor and father of four says. "But that is the way our system unfortunately works. The majority of patients luckily have some health insurance—some way to pay for all the services and medicines which are terribly expensive—but some don't."


Beyond the Stethoscope

The Olympics
(first published February 20, 2018 by Stephen Imbeau reproduced here with Permission of the Florence Morning News and SC Now)

Stephen A. Imbeau, MD
Editor, SED Newsletter


As the saying goes, “I love exercise. I could watch it all day.” (adapted from Jerome K Jerome, “Three Men in a Boat (Not to Say Nothing of the Dog),” JW Arrowsmith Publishers, 1889).

In fact, I am addicted to the Olympics. Although I am no athlete, I watch the Olympics on television faithfully every two years. In fact, I even get up at 5 a.m. in the winter to watch the events, particularly curling, when they are not in North America. I have often talked about going in person, but have never done so.

The Olympic movement goes back to Ancient Greece and the city of Olympia. Tradition places the first games in 776 B.C. One myth credits Hercules with organizing the first games.
Southeastern Delegation to the AMA
Karen A. Foy, Executive Director
317 Marshside Drive N
St. Augustine, FL 32080