Tribute to Dr. Jack Geiger

Congressional Record -- Senate.
November 8, 2005.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to recognize an outstanding leader from New York who has spent his entire career championing improved health forminorities. Dr. Jack Geiger has been a pioneer in medical care for underserved populations through his dedicated work as a human rights advocate, scholar, educator, and physician. In commemoration of his 80th birthday this month, I would like to congratulate him on the extraordinary accomplishments he has achieved during his career that have impacted so many people in our Nation and in other countries.

For more than 60 years, Dr. Geigerhas promoted human rights in thehealth field. In fact, he was one of the earliest leaders to advance the idea ofhealth care as a civil right. He helpedpioneer the American health centersmovement by creating the first health centers in rural Mississippi and inner-city Boston, which then burgeoned into a network of more than 900 urban, rural, and migrant centers serving millions of low-income patients today.

It is difficult to cover all of Dr. Geiger’s work in addressing human rights violations in the health sector because his contributions are so numerous. In the 1940s and 1950s, he led campaigns to end racial discrimination in hospitals and medical schools. In the 1960s, he helped provide medical care to civil rights workers. Later, he helped found and head the Physicians for Human Rights, a national organization of health professionals that investigates human rights abuses and war crimes and provides medical aid to victims of oppression. This organization shared in the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1998. In more recent years, he has served as the president of the Committee for Health in Southern Africa and as an NGO delegate to the United Nations Conference on Racism and Discrimination, in addition to leading several human rights missions abroad.

Dr. Geiger also has been a prolific researcher and author of numerous articles, book chapters, reports, and monographs on such topics as community-oriented primary care and community health centers, poverty and health care, the role of physicians in the protection of human rights, and health effects of nuclear war. Most recently, he has contributed to seminal reports on racial and ethnic disparities in clinical diagnosis and treatment.

As an educator and a physician, Dr. Geiger has produced generations of committed health professionals throughout the world and has provided medical care to countless patients and communities of all backgrounds. Before assuming his current position as Arthur C. Logan Professor Emeritus of Community Medicine at City University of New York Medical School and Visiting Professor of Epidemiology at Mailman-Columbia School of Public Health, he served as Chairman of the Department of Community Medicine at Tufts University Medical School, Visiting Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Chairman of the Department of Community Medicine at State University of New York at Stony Brook School of Medicine. There is no doubt that this extraordinary man embodies the true meaning of ‘‘doctor’’ and has positively changed the lives of tens of thousands of people.

For his work on health care, human rights, and poverty, Dr. Gieger has been recognized with scores of illustrious awards; most recently, he was the recipient of the Award for Academic Leadership in Primary Care from Morehouse School of Medicine in 2003 and the Paul Cornely Award from the Physicians Forum in 2004. It is only fitting that we acknowledge this health champion today. I congratulate Dr. Geiger on a lifetime full of remarkable accomplishments and am proud to honor his 80th birthday.