Our Founder

The first physician in his family, internist Dr. Robert Dawson, set a precedent and started a tradition. Now he’s bent on helping others carry on the legacy through the Black Bag Medicine Foundation established at the Greater New Orleans Foundation in 1999.

Robert Dawson decided on his profession at the age of 16 when his mother suffered a stroke. After earning his undergraduate degree at Tulane University, he completed his medical training at the Uniform Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. There, he decided that he wanted to use his expertise to treat people like those he saw in his childhood neighborhood.

Dawson, a public health physician, has served as the medical director of EXCELth, Inc., a nonprofit system treating approximately 18,000 people each year, and as senior advisor to Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher. “I look into the future, and I see African American children who can only dream about what they want to do when they grow up,” says Dawson. “The Black Bag Medicine Foundation’s purpose is to develop a pipeline from kindergarten through residency to help grow more African American physicians. When someone tells me they want to be a doctor, I take them at their word.”