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Antonia Novello
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Antonia Coello Novello (born August 23, 1944) is a Puerto Rican physician and public health administrator. She was a vice admiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and served as fourteenth Surgeon General of the United States from 1990 to 1993. Novello is the first woman and first Hispanic to serve as Surgeon General.
Novello served Commissioner of Health for the State of New York from 1999 to 2006. She is currently under criminal investigation with potential felony charges in New York for allegations of abusing authority during her tenure with the state health department, according to news sources.
llo was born in Fajardo, Puerto Rico.
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Encyclopedia
Antonia Coello Novello (born August 23, 1944) is a Puerto Rican physician and public health administrator. She was a vice admiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and served as fourteenth Surgeon General of the United States from 1990 to 1993. Novello is the first woman and first Hispanic to serve as Surgeon General.
Novello served Commissioner of Health for the State of New York from 1999 to 2006. She is currently under criminal investigation with potential felony charges in New York for allegations of abusing authority during her tenure with the state health department, according to news sources.
Biography
Early years
Novello was born in Fajardo, Puerto Rico. She was born with an abnormality of the colon that posed a challenge throughout her childhood and adolescence. She was not treated until age 18, when she received an operation that resulted in complications which would trouble Novello for two more years. The problems were resolved after she received treatment at the Mayo Clinic at age 20.
Novello graduated from high school at age 15, received her Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras in 1965, and earned her Doctor in Medicine (MD) Degree from the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine at San Juan in 1970. She then completed her internship and residency in nephrology at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Novello remained at Michigan from 1973 to 1974 on a fellowship in the Department of Internal Medicine, and spent the following year on a fellowship in the Department of Pediatrics at Georgetown University School of Medicine. From 1976 to 1978, she was in private practice in pediatrics in Springfield, Virginia.
Career
Public Health Service
In 1979, Novello joined the Public Health Service and received a commission in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (PHSCC). Her first assignment was as a project officer at the National Institute of Arthritis, Metabolism and Digestive Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). From 1976, she also held a clinical appointment in pediatrics at Georgetown University Hospital. During her years at NIH, Novello worked on an MPH. degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, receiving the degree in 1982.
Novello held various positions at NIH before being appointed to Assistant Surgeon General grade in the PHSCC and assignment as the Deputy Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in 1986. She also served as Coordinator for AIDS Research for NICHD from September 1987. In this role, she developed a particular interest in pediatric AIDS, which caught the attention of the White House.
Novello made major contributions to the drafting and enactment of the Organ Transplantation Procurement Act of 1984 while assigned to the United States Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, working with the staff of committee chairman Orrin Hatch.
Surgeon General
Novello was appointed Surgeon General by President George H. W. Bush, beginning her tenure on March 9, 1990 and was appointed to the temporary rank of vice admiral in the regular corps while the Surgeon General. She was the first woman and the first Hispanic to hold the position.
During her tenure as Surgeon General, Novello focused her attention on the health of women, children and minorities, as well as on underage drinking, smoking, and AIDS. She played an important role in launching the Healthy Children Ready to Learn Initiative. She was actively involved in working with other organizations to promote immunization of children and childhood injury prevention efforts. She spoke out often and forcefully about illegal underage drinking, and called upon the United States Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General to issue a series of eight reports on the subject.
Novello also worked to discourage illegal tobacco use by young people, and repeatedly criticized the tobacco industry for appealing to the youth market through the use of cartoon characters such as Joe Camel. A workshop that she convened led to the emergence of a National Hispanic/Latino Health Initiative.
Novello was controversial among abortion rights advocates due to her support of a policy prohibiting family planning program workers who received federal financing from discussing abortion with their patients.
Novello left the post of Surgeon General on June 30, 1993. Even the administration of President Bill Clinton praised Novello for her "vigor and talent."
Later years
After leaving the position of Surgeon General, Novello remained in the regular corps of the Public Health Service. She was assigned the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Special Representative for Health and Nutrition from 1993 to 1996 reverting back to her permanent two-star rank of rear admiral. In 1996, she became Visiting Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. She retired from the Public Health Service and the PHSCC shortly after with the grade of vice admiral.
In 1999, Governor of New York George Pataki appointed Novello as the Commissioner of Health for the State of New York. She served until 2006. In February 2006, she announced that she would not run for the United States Senate against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. That year, she was a finalist for the Hispanic Business magazine Woman of the Year Award and was featured in the April 2006 issue.
As of 2009, Novello is vice president of Women and Children Health and Policy Affairs at Disney Children's Hospital in Orlando, Florida.
Abuse of power allegations
A January 2009 report by the New York Inspector General's office claimed that during her seven-year tenure as New York State Health Commissioner at an annual salary of $256,000 per year, Novello routinely abused her authority over health department staff. The Inspector General's office, which had been investigating Novello since 2007, referred a criminal case against her to the Albany County district attorney that could include felony charges against Novello, including defrauding the government and offering a false instrument for filing.
According to the report, Novello ordered employees to work more than 2,500 hours of overtime performing personal services for her, including picking up her groceries and store purchases, picking up her dry cleaning, picking up her personal friends from airports in New York and New Jersey, watering her houseplants in her home, assisting her during shopping excursions to Macy's and Saks Fifth Avenue, and chauffeuring Novello and members of her family. The overtime reportedly cost New York taxpayers $48,000. The report cited several alleged examples, including that Novello ordered a Medicaid investigator to drive her to Macy's and Saks Fifth Avenue, and that Novello allegedly ordered a security guard to carry a heavy statue of Buddha she had purchased into her apartment. This guard was also ordered to use his teenage son as unpaid labor to rearrange Novello's heavier furniture on other occasions. Novello also allegedly had a publicly funded health agency spend $15,000 on an oil portrait of herself.
Inspector General Joseph Fisch said Novello "shamelessly and blatantly exploited and abused her staff, adding a new dimension to the definition of 'arrogance' and 'chutzpah.'" An attorney for Novello told The New York Times, which first printed the story, that Novello did nothing unjustified or unwarranted, and claimed the inspector general’s investigation methods "aren’t held to the same standard of proof that’s required in a criminal investigation or a criminal trial (and) tend to adopt hearsay as truth.”
Personal life
Novello was married to former US Navy flight surgeon and psychiatrist, Joseph R. Novello. She was the sister-in-law of Saturday Night Live alumnus Don Novello, creator of the character persona Father Guido Sarducci.
Awards
In 2002, Novello was awarded the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal. She was also presented with the Legion of Merit Medal by the United States Secretary of State Colin Powell.
See also
- List of famous Puerto Ricans
- Puerto Rican scientists and inventors
External links
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