A. Paul Brooks, Jr., M.D., a 1966 graduate of the West Virginia University School of Medicine’s medical degree program, has been named the School’s 2015 Distinguished Alumnus.
“This award recognizes Dr. Brooks for a lifetime of leadership service to health care in West Virginia,” said Clay Marsh, M.D., WVU vice president and executive dean for health sciences. “His work has benefitted not only the patients in his family medicine practice, but tens of thousands of others who have been touched by the primary care network he established in West Virginia and the medical research he led in the Ohio Valley.”
A highly trusted physician in the Parkersburg area, Dr. Brooks and his company, Brookmar Inc., were responsible for the largest environmental health enrollment survey in U.S. history, involving 69,000 participants. Data they collected was the primary basis for finding potential links to human disease among people exposed to a chemical known as perfluorooctanoic acid (also known as PFOA or C8). A number of influential research papers using this data set have appeared in leading journals.
He was the board chair of a health maintenance organization, Primary One, which provided coverage to many West Virginians beginning in the 1990s.
Brooks, a Nicholas County native, completed internship training at Cabell-Huntington Hospital in Huntington. He was a captain in the U.S. Air Force, and served as general medical officer and chief of outpatient service at Fairchild Air Force Base 1967-69.
He is board certified by the American Board of Family Practice and the National Board of Medical Examiners. His memberships include past president and national delegate of the West Virginia Academy of Family Practice, life member of the American Academy of Family Physicians and charter member of the WVU Foundation’s Irvin Stewart Society.
Dr. Brooks is now retired, and he and his wife, Nancy, live in Vienna. They have four children: Belinda Armstrong, Rebecca Smith, Gregory Brooks and Douglas Brooks.
-WVU-
tds/07/27/15
CONTACT: Tara Scatterday; WVU School of Medicine
304.293.0630; tdscatterday@hsc.wvu.edu
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