Urologic Diseases Research Updates
Spring 2012
Brown Medicine Magazine Profiles NIDDK Director Griffin P. Rodgers
Excerpted from Brown Medicine
By Sarah Baldwin-Beneich and David Peterson
Brown Medicine magazine featured Griffin P. Rodgers, M.D., M.A.C.P., director of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, on the cover of its Fall 2011 issue. Read an excerpt from the story, “The Ambassador,” below:
“A hematologist by training, Rodgers first became interested in medicine growing up in the ’60s and ’70s in New Orleans. He excelled in math and science early on. His father taught physical education and science. But it was his mother, a public health nurse, who first exposed him to the practice and potential of medicine.
“Many of my mother’s patients weren’t able to get to the clinic during the work week. She’d take it upon herself to visit them at their homes during the weekend. We went to some rough neighborhoods,” Rodgers recalls, laughing softly, “and she took me along as protection.” He watched as she applied her nursing training and practical approaches to solve medical problems.
“I learned quite a bit this way. Her knowledge, compassion, and ability to get along with people went a long way in getting them to follow instructions, do follow-up.”
Making the rounds with his mother was formative in another sense, as well: “I saw that diabetes, obesity, and kidney disease hit African Americans harder than others. This was my first exposure to the effects and interaction of genetics and the environment.”
For more information or to read the full article,
visit the Brown Medicine magazine website at
brownmedicinemagazine.org/index.php 
.
NIH Publication No. 12–5743
May 2012
Page last updated June 11, 2012
