Health Care

This year’s search for Georgia Trend’s healthcare heroes took us to Columbus, Augusta and Thomasville as well as Atlanta. We found individuals who are joining their skills and their passion – one traveling regularly to Haiti to provide medical and…

Sharon Jenkins Tucker is living her second life. The first one fell apart and vanished like a dream. “I had a fabulous job,” says Tucker, who was putting her master’s degree to work as international admissions counselor for her alma…

It got to where Paul Smith couldn’t feed his dogs without losing his breath or feeling chest pains. Couldn’t hunt, couldn’t even take a bath. The exertion was killing him. “I was living, but just living, wasn’t much functioning to…

Brencie Werner discovered the lump herself. It was spring 2008 – after the experts had concluded that breast self-examination was probably a wasted effort, and not worth a physician’s time to teach patients how to do it. Fortunately, Werner hadn’t…

This year’s heroes include an Atlanta advocate for people with disabilities, a Columbus hospital professional who helps fledgling doctors soar into their practices, and physicians in Albany and Brunswick dedicated to spreading the growing wealth of modern medical services to…

Jeff Marshall hates the term “for-profit.” Hates it. “It’s a twist of words, a nuance to make ‘not-for-profit’ seem somehow more – I don’t know – community friendly,” says Marshall, a cardiologist and president of NGTC Health Properties, a partnership…

When Allyson Bickers of Flowery Branch gave birth to her second child last summer, via scheduled C-section delivery, she and baby Hudson were instant celebrities. The birth was the first ever at Northside Hospital-Forsyth’s new Women’s Center. The staff was…

More than automobile accidents, lung disease or all forms of cancer combined, heart disease is killing Georgians. Each year, more than 17,000 Peach State residents die from heart disease, and surveys show that at least two-thirds of us have one…

This year’s Healthcare Heroes can trace to their youth a passion for their professions, and their generous contributions of time and talent have meant better healthcare for their communities, their state, and even the world at large. A rural doctor…

When Ken Baxley was diagnosed with a mitral valve defect last January, he wasn’t sure which frightened him more: the prospect of having his chest opened on the operating table to repair the leaking valve in his heart or the…