Georges  C.  Benjamin, MD

Georges C. Benjamin, MD

American Public Health Association (APHA)

Executive Director

Expertise: PhysicianPublic Health

Georges Benjamin is known as one of the nation’s most influential physician leaders because he speaks passionately and eloquently about the health issues having the most impact on our nation today. From his firsthand experience as a physician, he knows what happens when preventive care is not available, and when the healthy choice is not an easy choice. As executive director of APHA since 2002, he is leading the Association’s push to make America the healthiest nation in one generation.

He came to APHA from his position as secretary of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Benjamin became secretary of health in Maryland in April 1999, following four years as its deputy secretary for public health services. As secretary, Benjamin oversaw the expansion and improvement of the state’s Medicaid program.

Benjamin, of Gaithersburg, Maryland, is a graduate of the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois College of Medicine. He is board-certified in internal medicine and a fellow of the American College of Physicians, a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, a fellow emeritus of the American College of Emergency Physicians and an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health.

An established administrator, author and orator, Benjamin started his medical career in 1981 in Tacoma, Wash., where he managed a 72,000-patient visit ambulatory care service as chief of the Acute Illness Clinic at the Madigan Army Medical Center and was an attending physician within the Department of Emergency Medicine. A few years later, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he served as chief of emergency medicine at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. After leaving the Army, he chaired the Department of Community Health and Ambulatory Care at the District of Columbia General Hospital. He was promoted to the acting commissioner for public health for the District of Columbia and later directed one of the busiest ambulance services in the nation as interim director of the Emergency Ambulance Bureau of the District of Columbia Fire Department.

At APHA, Benjamin also serves as publisher of the nonprofit's monthly publication, The Nation's Health, the association's official newspaper, and the American Journal of Public Health, the profession’s premier scientific publication. He is the author of more than 100 scientific articles and book chapters. His recent book The Quest for Health Reform: A Satirical History is an exposé of the nearly 100-year quest to ensure quality affordable health coverage for all through the use of political cartoons.

Benjamin is a member of the National Academy of Medicine (Formally the Institute of Medicine) of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine and also serves on the boards for many organizations including Research! America and the Reagan-Udall Foundation. In 2008, 2014, and 2016 he was named one of the top 25 minority executives in health care by Modern Healthcare Magazine, in addition to being voted among the 100 most influential people in health care from 2007-2017.

In April 2016, President Obama appointed Benjamin to the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, a council that advises the president on how best to assure the security of the nation's critical infrastructure.

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“We are also concerned that this change was made without effective consultation with public health professionals who are on the ground managing this outbreak," APHA Executive Director George C. Benjamin, MD, said in the statement. "It makes the messaging confusing and may reduce access for those needing testing. Lack of access to adequate testing has been a significant barrier to getting effective disease control of this pandemic."

- Experts Outraged Over CDC Rollback on Asymptomatic COVID-19 Testing

“I think that at the end of the day, wearing masks, washing your hands, and keeping your distance is still the name of the game right now. We’re now adding to that the vaccinations, but we’re going to have to speed that up in a dramatic way for us to be really effective in controlling this outbreak, but it’s a big problem, and people need to understand that those basic public health measures of mask-wearing, washing hands and keeping your distance work, and anything that we do that exacerbates that, is going to continue this outbreak.”

- Vaccine Distribution

“I think it’s important for us to tell people that we’ve actually been working on a vaccine for SARS- which is a relative of this virus, since 2003 and so while the early studies were done many, many years ago and we’ve also been working on mRNA vaccines to deal with cancer for many years, and what you have now is you have the bringing together of work previously done on vaccines and work being done on cancer, and so what we really did this time is we did the science and the research just as we’ve always done, we didn’t change that really in any meaningful way in terms of time, the size of the population that we did research on.”

- Vaccine Distribution

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