ALUM's career reflects social commitment

Last year was especially eventful for Silas Norman, Jr., MD, ’76. Selected by Wayne State University’s Organization of Black Alumni to receive its 2000 Alumni Achievement Award, Dr. Norman was similarly honored by the United Negro College Fund and the Michigan Department of Community Health. Currently the medical director of ambulatory services and vice president of Affiliated Internists, Inc, of the WSU School of Medicine, Dr. Norman has dedicated his 25-year medical career to shaping health care policy and practice to improve lives of others he describes as “common people, like myself.” But Dr. Norman is an uncommon individual.

His commitment to reform was nurtured during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.  Following undergraduate study at Paine College in his hometown, Augusta, Ga., and service as a second lieutenant in the United States Army, Dr. Norman worked in the Selma, Alabama Literacy Project. Soon thereafter, he became a field secretary and Alabama State project director for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). His youthful idealism did not fade as he moved into adulthood.

Wayne State’s innovative post baccalaureate program, established to broaden access to medical education for talented students from under-represented groups, provided the path to Dr. Norman’s career in medicine. After earning his degree, he completed internship and residency training in internal medicine at the university’s affiliate, Detroit General Hospital, and worked for two years as physician-in-charge of the Detroit Health Department’s Primary Care Network.

Dr. Norman attributes his interest in administration and academic medicine to their capacity for improving both patient and physician experiences. He has held appointments on the School of Medicine’s full-time and clinical faculty, as well as leadership positions in the Department of Internal Medicine. Also a member of the school’s Department of Community Medicine, Dr. Norman’s lectures and academic presentations focus on tuberculosis, AIDS/HIV and hepatitis.

His career also includes 13 years in increasingly responsible positions in correctional health care on both the county and state levels. Appointed chief medical officer for the Michigan Department of Correction in 1997, he worked for two years to improve medical care for inmates statewide. In recognition of Dr. Norman’s achievements, the hospital emergency room at the Jackson Clinical Complex has been designated The Silas Norman, Jr., ER. Dr. Norman remains involved in the field, serving on the National Commission on Correctional Health Care’s accreditation team and the Bristol-Meyers Squibb Distinguished Faculty on Correctional HIV Medical Services.

Active in invigorating community life, Dr. Norman is a church deacon, sings with the Brazeal Dennard Chorale and is involved in his undergraduate college’s alumni association, the Lions Club and the NAACP.  Among his three accomplished grown children is a 1996 graduate of the School of Medicine.