DALLAS – Jan. 08, 2024 – UT Southwestern Medical Center joined leaders in Dallas and across the nation in mourning the loss and honoring the legacy of U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, an inspirational leader who helped advance the Medical Center’s science, research, clinical care, and educational initiatives during her extraordinary career representing the area.
Throughout 30 years in Congress, Rep. Johnson was an ardent supporter of UT Southwestern, working to secure vital research funding and helping to attract the best and brightest students and faculty to the institution.
Recently, she championed the region’s successful bid for the ARPA-H Customer Experience Hub, one of the federal agency’s three new national hubs for medical innovation. She also helped launch in 2023 the Texas Instruments Biomedical Engineering and Sciences Building, a five-story, 150,000-square-foot facility that supports research by dozens of faculty members from UT Southwestern and UT Dallas.
In 2022, she provided inspirational remarks at UT Southwestern Medical School’s commencement and helped dedicate UT Southwestern Medical Center at RedBird, the first academic medical center facility to serve southern Dallas.
Over several decades, Rep. Johnson was also an advocate for the Medical Center’s many STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) initiatives and faculty recruitment efforts – programs such as STARS (Science Teacher Access to Resources at Southwestern) and a summer internship for youth interested in pursuing careers in science and medicine.
“As a registered nurse who had to overcome racism and many challenges early in her career, and who later became the first RN elected to Congress, Rep. Johnson consistently demonstrated her deep commitment to finding new opportunities to advance science, funding for research, clinical care for those in need, and STEM education for aspiring youths,” said Daniel K. Podolsky, M.D., President of UT Southwestern Medical Center. “It was clear her motivation evolved from a sincere and heartfelt appreciation for the challenges and hardships involved in caregiving, which seemed to fuel her ability to deliver inspiration to new generations to carry on this important mission as she so eloquently did in her commencement remarks for the UT Southwestern Medical School class of 2022 graduates.”
Rep. Johnson spent 16 years at the Dallas VA Medical Center and was the first African American to serve as Chief Psychiatric Nurse at the VA hospital. She left nursing in the 1970s to pursue a career in politics and later became the first African American from Dallas to serve in the Texas Senate since Reconstruction. She left that role to serve as Regional Director of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare for President Jimmy Carter, and she was the first African American woman to hold that position.
Among her many accomplishments, she was the first female Ranking Member of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology and later became the first woman and first person of color to chair that committee. She also made significant contributions to public health, including leading the effort to establish the National Suicide Hotline, and introduced the Broadening Participation in STEM Education Act.
“We will greatly miss Congresswoman Johnson’s thoughtful advocacy and guidance,” Dr. Podolsky said. “Her invigorating spirit and invaluable leadership will live on in Dallas and at UT Southwestern.”
Dr. Podolsky holds the Philip O’Bryan Montgomery, Jr., M.D. Distinguished Presidential Chair in Academic Administration and the Doris and Bryan Wildenthal Distinguished Chair in Medical Science.
