Personal History:

Rodney N. Powell, MD is a Pediatrician, International Health Consultant, former Professor of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota, retired Professor of Family Practice and Community Health, University of Hawaii and is a gay African American.

While a medical student at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee during the years 1957-61, Rodney was a student civil rights activist and protest leader in the African American Civil Rights Movement. Along with other students, Rodney had the privilege and honor to learn and apply the philosophy and strategies of love and nonviolence under the guidance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other dedicated ministers of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

After 15 years of marriage to a sophomore classmate in 1960 during his junior year of medical school, Rodney began an agonizing but liberating passage in 1975 from the humiliating closet of life-long denial and suffering where he had hidden his sexual orientation and deprived himself the identity of first class American citizenship, in this case rooted in homophobic religious bigotry rather than the institutionalized racism and segregation confronted by the Civil Rights Movement.

Rodney, now age 74, has lived in Hawaii since 1977 with his partner of 32 years, Dr. Bob Eddinger, who is an incredibly supportive and loving parent to their three children, eight grandchildren and is a good friend to Rodney’s former wife, Dr. Gloria Johnson-Powell. Bob has enriched all of their lives and enhanced their family bonds. Their reconfigured family celebrates all holidays together, mostly in Hawaii, and many family reunions in their scattered home locations in Hawaii, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, California and Germany.

Civil Rights Experiences:

Simply stated, conservative Christianity, citing Holy Scripture, preaches a gospel of rejection and condemnation, arguing that there are Biblical injunctions against homosexuality that not only justify, but in fact require that homosexual sinners must not be given equal civil rights, that homosexuals are not worthy of the same legal status or constitutional rights enjoyed by heterosexuals. As an American citizen who is both Black and gay, Rodney has experienced and suffered from such evil in the same manner he experienced and suffered from the perverse interpretations of Christian doctrine used to justify slavery and to justify segregation and racism.

Lessons learned from the Civil Rights Movement have convinced Rodney that the redemptive power of relentless nonviolent resistance, civil opposition and strident confrontation used by Dr. King to challenge and overcome religion-based racism and segregation are the strategies of choice to overcome and transform the homophobic oppression and persecution of the lgbt community by conservative Christianity and other religions across the nation today.

Civil rights cannot be equally or justly differentiated for separate classes of American citizens. Conservative Christian churches can decide which dogmas and doctrines to impose on themselves, but they must not decide which citizen is worthy of a civil right bestowed by government to its citizenry.

Rodney believes that, in order to achieve equality and justice, we must do more than challenge the existing status quo, case by case, lawsuit by lawsuit.

Despite today’s successful battles, including marriage, Rodney believes that the lgbt community and our supportive allies must confront the conscience of all American citizens of good will to reject and denounce the intolerance, terror and evil of homophobia based on scripture advocated by conservative religious institutions. Depictions of lgbt persons as intrinsically disordered (Catholicism) and impaired by character flaws and personal weakness (conservative and evangelical Christianity) must be challenged and rejected by ordinary American citizens.

Rodney believes that in order to transform America’s religion-based bigotries currently inscribed into laws and especially customs that will continue to harm us, our lgbt community and organizations and our allies must work in partnership to:

1. challenge and deny social respectability afforded to religious bigotries;
2. stigmatize religious beliefs that deny equality and physically, emotionally harm lgbt persons;
3. identify and challenge legislative, judicial and executive political operatives who fail to uphold equal protection provisions of state and federal constitutions and miserably fail to support the issues of civil rights and justice that should accrue equally to all citizens from our local, state, and federal governments.;
4. demand that the media not continue to give a pass to bigotries based on religious beliefs and traditional family values.

The most convincing lesson Rodney learned from the Civil Rights Movement is that American society cannot be changed and religion-based bigotry transformed by those unwilling to rock the boat and who prefer the illusion of security and imagery of token equality to social protest and social unrest.

Professional Experiences:

Rodney’s active 42 years medical career was spent working in the public sector, divided between academia and international health. The most profound influence in his medical career was the two years spent with Peace Corps 1962 -1964 in Ethiopia and Tanzania. His focus shifted from academic Pediatrics to international health with an emphasis on four child survival strategies:

1. treatment and prevention of acute respiratory diseases malaria, and dehydrating diarrheal diseases with oral rehydration solution - a basic and easy combination of glucose, salt, and water;
2. vaccination against the six major vaccine-preventable childhood diseases (measles, poliomyelitis, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, and tuberculosis);
3. nutrition education, including the promotion of breastfeeding and timely introduction of nutritious weaning foods, vitamin A, infant and child growth monitoring; and
4. local delivery systems of family planning technologies for fertility rate reduction, birth spacing and reduction of high risk deliveries.

Academia provided the foundation to establish evidence-based validation and success of these strategies. Grants and contracts resources from international donor agencies, particularly the United States Agency for International Development and the World Health Organization funded the technical assistance to Ministries of Health, medical schools, nursing schools and medical assistant schools in developing countries to establish affordable, sustainable and replicable primary health care services and systems of preventive health care for immunizations, nutrition, child spacing, and safe water and sanitation.

Education:

B.S., June 1957 St. Joseph's University,

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

M.D., June 1961 Meharry Medical College

Nashville, Tennessee

M.P.H., June 1967 School of Public Health, Univ. of

California at Los Angeles

Straight Pediatric Internship, July, 1961 - June, 1962,

University of Minnesota Hospital, Dept. of Pediatrics

First Year Pediatric Residency, July, 1964 - June, 1965

University of Minnesota Hospital, Dept. of Pediatrics

Chief Resident in Pediatrics, July, 1965 - June, 1966,

University of California at Los Angeles

Board Certification : American Board of Pediatrics

Board Eligibility: American Board of Preventive Medicine and Public Health

Academic Appointments:

1979 to 2004 Clinical Professor (now retired)

Department of Family Practice and Community Health, School of Medicine, University of Hawaii

1976 to 1979 Professor

Department of Family Practice and Community Health, School of Medicine, University of Hawaii

1971 to 1973 Adjunct Professor of International Health, Division of Graduate Studies and Research, Meharry Medical College

1971 to 1973 Research Associate, Department of Population Studies, School of Public Health, University of Michigan

1970 to 1971 Professor

Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota School of Medicine

1970 to 1971 Professor

Department of Hospital and Health Services Administration, School of Public Health, Univ. of Minnesota

1968 to 1970 Assistant Professor

Department of Pediatrics, University of Southern California School of Medicine

1968 to 1970 Assistant Professor

Department of Community Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Southern California

Professional Positions:

1994 to 2004 Consultant – Health Disparities among Racial Minorities in Urban and Rural US Communities

1976 to 1993 Director for Development & Operations

The MEDEX International Health Group

John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii at Manoa

1974 to 1976 Medical Director Crippled Children's Services, California Department of Health

1971 to 1973 Director Regional Public Health Offices for Africa (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania)

United States Agency for International Development

1970 to 1971 Director of Ambulatory Care Hennepin County General Hospital, Minneapolis, Minnesota

1968 to 1970 Project Director South Central Multipurpose Health Service Center

(Watts Neighborhood Health Center - funded by Office of Economic Opportunity through the School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles, California)

1962 to 1964 Surgeon, United States Public Health Service - Overseas assignment to Peace Corps:

Ethiopia 1962-1963 and Tanzania 1963-1964