Leroy Edgar Burney
| Leroy Edgar Burney | |
|---|---|
 |
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| 8th Surgeon General of the United States | |
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In office 1956–1961 |
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| President | Dwight D. Eisenhower |
| Preceded by | Leonard A. Scheele |
| Succeeded by | Luther Leonidas Terry |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
31 December 1906 Burney, Indiana, USA |
| Died | 31 July 1998 (aged 91) Park Ridge, Illinois, USA |
Leroy Edgar Burney (December 31, 1906 – July 31, 1998) was an American physician and public health official. He was appointed the eighth Surgeon General of the United States from 1956 to 1961.
Burney was born in Burney, Indiana, a town founded by his great-grandfather. He began premedical coursework at Butler University (1924–26) and completed both undergraduate and medical training at Indiana University (S.B., 1928; M.D., 1930). An introduction to the Public Health Service (PHS) came through a one-year internship at the Chicago Marine Hospital. Initiation into the world of public health followed when Burney took advantage of a fellowship to study at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health (M.S., 1931). Courtesy of the renowned epidemiologist Dr. W. H. Frost and the Rockefeller Foundation, Burney was allowed to extend his studies for six months of field work at the Joint Health Department of Charlottesville, Virginia, immunizing preschool children against diphtheria.
From Charlottesville, Burney applied for and was accepted into the PHS Regular Corps as an Assistant Surgeon (1932). His area of expertise would be public health administration at the state and local level, the front lines of public health. Like many of his generation at PHS, Burney came up through the ranks of then-Surgeon General Thomas Parran, Jr.’s venereal disease control programs, receiving specialized training at the New York Marine Hospital (1934) and assisting in the management of rapid treatment centers around the country. Burney helped establish the first PHS mobile venereal disease clinic, in Brunswick, Georgia (1937–39), bringing access to treatment for African Americans, whom Jim Crow segregation excluded from the predominantly white locations of other facilities.
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