An Interview with AAIP President
Dr. Jim Thompson

Dr. Jim Thompson, of the Lenape (Delaware) tribe, and a member of the Association of American Indian Physicians for three decades, was recently elected as the organization’s new president. Dr. Thompson is currently a physician in the Walter P. Carter Center of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.

Prior to that he was Executive Director for Graduate Medical Education at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, and has served as Deputy Medical Director for the American Psychiatric Association in Washington, D.C. and as a Research Psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health in Rockville. He holds B.S. and M.D. degrees from Tulane University in New Orleans and an M.P.H. degree from the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, N.C. He has published numerous articles on mental health services and minority health and culture.

Dr. Thompson is a passionate and eloquent advocate for American Indian health issues, and we have decided to publish our interview with him in full. Tribal Connections Editor Miles White spoke with Dr. Thompson by telephone in November from his office in Baltimore.