Louis W. Sullivan Papers

Collection

Identifier: MS C 637

Abstract

Collection primarily consists of the daily record of Dr. Sullivan's term as Secretary of Health and Human Services from 1989-1993. His pre- and post-HHS career as a hematology research scientist and medical educator, health policy expert, advocate for improving health equity and disparities for Black and underserved populations, and increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the health professions are also documented to a smaller degree.

Dates

Creation: 1957-2023
Creation: Majority of material found in 1982-2007

Extent

120.67 Linear Feet (100 boxes + map drawer items)

Creator

Sullivan, Louis Wade, 1933- (Person)

Physical Location

Materials stored onsite. History of Medicine Division. National Library of Medicine

Language of Materials

Collection materials primarily in English

Access Restrictions

Collection is largely open for research. Small portions of the collection are restricted according to HMD's Access to Health Information of Individuals policy. Contact the Reference Staff for information regarding access. For access to the policy and application form, please visit https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/manuscripts/phi.pdf.

Copyright Information

Donor's copyrights were transferred to the public domain. Archival collections often contain mixed copyrights; while NLM is the owner of the physical items, permission to examine collection materials is not an authorization to publish. These materials are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study. It is the user's responsibility to research and understand any applicable copyright and re-publication rights not allowed by fair use. NLM does not grant permissions to publish.

Privacy Information

Archives and manuscript collections may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations. Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in any collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications for which the National Library of Medicine assumes no responsibility.

Biographical Note

Louis Wade Sullivan was born November 3, 1933 in Atlanta, Ga., however the family moved to Blakely, Ga. shortly thereafter. His mother was an English teacher and his father was a mortician who operated a funeral home and ambulance service. His parents sent him, and his brother Walter, to live with friends in Atlanta during the school year. As a young boy he found a role model in Dr. Joseph Griffin, a local physician. Sullivan was impressed both by his professional demeanor and skill and also by how rarely he encountered a Black physician, inspiring Sullivan to pursue a medical career early on.

Sullivan graduated from Atlanta’s Booker T. Washington high school in 1950 as salutatorian and in 1954 he graduated from Morehouse College magna cum laude with a degree in biology. His early career started in Boston, Ma. after he earned his M.D. at the Boston University School of Medicine. Certified in internal medicine and hematology, Dr. Sullivan spent the 1960s and early 1970s researching and teaching at Boston City Hospital, Harvard University, and Boston University Medical Center with a short tenure as professor at Seton Hall College of Medicine. One of his most notable studies investigated the correlation between alcoholism and its effect on the human-blood forming system.

In 1966 he became co-director of Hematology at Boston University Medical Center. The next year he founded Boston University Hematology Service at Boston City Hospital and directed the Boston Sickle Cell Center. He remained acutely aware that, despite his success, he was still as relatively unique as a Black health care professional as Dr. Griffin had been thirty years earlier.

In 1975 he accepted an invitation from his alma mater, Morehouse College, to build a medical education program there. A two-year program in basic medical sciences established in 1978 matured by 1985 into the Morehouse School of Medicine, a four-year program under his stewardship as president and dean. He augmented his efforts to encourage minority medical education at Morehouse in 1977 by cofounding the Association of Minority Health Professions Schools, which advocated for training, career counseling and more scholarships for minorities in the United States. Looking more broadly at the lack of educational opportunities outside the U.S., in 1985 he was instrumental in founding Medical Education for South African Blacks (MESAB), which he chaired from 1994 to 2007. MESAB has raised scholarship funds in the U.S. and South Africa to educate thousands Black health professionals in South Africa.

Dr. Sullivan left Morehouse to serve as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from 1989 to 1993 under President George H. W. Bush. As Secretary he supported several public and minority health initiatives. HHS released Healthy People 2000 as a guide to better health and disease preventions activities. The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 mandated new FDA labeling on packaged foods to better inform consumers. And under Dr. Sullivan, HHS established the NIH Office of Minority Health, which ultimately became the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) and launched a $100 million minority male health and injury prevention program.

In 1993 Dr. Sullivan returned to Atlanta as president and dean of Morehouse School of Medicine, which he continued until his retirement in 2002. In 2003 he then led the Sullivan Commission on Diversity in the Health Care Workforce, an outgrowth of a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to Duke University School of Medicine, which conducted research made policy recommendations addressing the scarcity of minorities in the health professions. The Commission led to the establishment of the Sullivan Alliance in 2005, which acted on the Commission’s reports and recommendations to emphasize the importance of racial and ethnic diversity in health professions and stimulate academic programs to carry out these initiatives.

In 2012 Sullivan published The Morehouse Mystique: Becoming a Doctor at the Nation's Newest African American Medical School, a history of Morehouse School of Medicine’s creation, his autobiography Breaking Ground: My Life in Medicine in 2014, and We’ll Fight It Out Here

Collection Summary

Correspondence, speeches, briefing files, subject files, news clippings, photographs, videotapes, and awards and honors predominantly document Louis Sullivan’s tenure as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) from 1989-1993. His pre- and post-HHS career as a hematology research scientist and medical educator, health policy expert, promoter of healthy lifestyles, advocate for improving health equity and disparities for Black and underserved populations, and increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the health professions are also documented to a smaller degree. Users will find large portions of the collection are damaged and fragile due to long-term storage in non-climate-controlled spaces.

The bulk of the collection is comprised of largely non-record copies of correspondence, reports, briefings, subject files, and Green Sheets/newsclippings documenting his service as HHS Secretary during the George H. W. Bush presidency from 1989-1993. The majority of these records are arranged chronologically, likely organized by administrative staff, meaning the various policy topics for which Sullivan is known are mixed throughout.

Series 9: HHS Secretary's Briefings and Series 12: HHS Secretary's Schedules and Calendars complement each other and are arranged chronologically. They include a comprehensive picture of Sullivan’s daily schedules of activities and background briefing materials for each meeting or event.

A main source of information about Sullivan’s policy and program activities are found in Series 10: HHS Secretary’s Memos--Action Memos subseries. It includes items and responses to meetings and inquiries largely represented by the same topics in the Briefings series and document actual actions taken by the Secretary rather than merely informational items which the Secretary may or may not have actually seen or read.

Series 11: HHS Secretary’s Reports--White House Reports subseries consists of copies of summaries of Sullivan’s weekly activities and accomplishments such as major policy events and conferences organized or attended, legislative activities, advisory committee participations, major press releases, media events and the like. 90 Day Reports are executive summaries from top-level offices within the Secretary’ Office about significant activities likely to be of importance to the secretary in the upcoming 90 days. Offices include Medicaid/Medicare Services, Office of Civil Rights, Office of Inspector General, HCFA, Planning and Evaluation, and Budget, but not other OPDOVS such as FDA or NIH. Along with Series 4: Speeches and Remarks, these series represent another large concentration of information about Sullivan’s many policy and health care agenda topics.

Series 8: HHS Correspondence is the most complex as the topics covered can be found across most all subseries and with overlapping dates. The Congressional subseries consists of non-record photocopies of outgoing replies to letters from various congresspeople and senators. Topics generally involve responses to constituent requests coming from congressional districts through their congressmen, requests about position openings, grant and other funding support, regulatory issues at state and local levels, and other day-to-day topics. There is little information about Sullivan’s larger strategic plans, agendas, or program initiatives for HHS. The Executive correspondence subseries are also non-record copies of outgoing letters to a variety of fellow cabinet members, governors, White House senior staff, and the President and his advisors. The topics cover more substantive national policy issues and comments on reports and regulatory activities, but also include more day-to-day activities such as appointment congratulations.

Series 8's Secretary’s Correspondence--General subsubseries and the General Correspondence subseries are largely the same content, consisting also of non-record copies of incoming letters from various external public and private constituents. They are a mix of congratulatory letters, invitations to meetings, public events, celebrations, industry events, congressional public appearances.

Sullivan’s post-HHS work as chairman of the Sullivan Commission on Diversity in the Healthcare Workforce is lightly represented through press releases, drafts, and prospective implementation meetings and planning files as led by The Sullivan Alliance. There are no materials documenting the Commission’s day-to-day work as executed by Duke University.

Sullivan’s medical educator and hematology research career at Boston University, Boston City Hospital, and as project director for the Boston Sickle Cell Center during the 1970s is also lightly represented.

Materials related to Sullivan’s founding and leadership of Morehouse College School of Medicine/Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) are located at the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library Archives Research Center, though a set of his MSM speeches is present in the NLM’s collection.