dr. ruffin noted, dr. bernadine healy established the woman's health limit -- initiative at that time and really helped to show that women suffer from heart attack, stroke, and other diseases where they were thought to be somewhat immune from them. dr. healy did a number things -- number of things to address women's health and minority health. she pointed -- appointed [unintelligible] that and her support, she contributed to it -- quite a bit. we will -- i have commented on the sullivan commission report. what we noted in september 2004 when we issued this report which was supported by the kellogg foundation was that while we had made progress in increasing diversity in the health professions, that progress was far from what we had expected would occur during the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's. in 1950, 2% of america's positions were african-american. by 1990, that was " -- 4.3%. one could say that one had doubled the percentage but we doubled from a small base. whereas african-americans represented 12% of the

dr. ruffin was the acting head of nih. he was appointed to head the office and has continued in that leadership position in the current time as that office was elevated to a center in january of 2000, some 10 years later. this past year, with the passage of health reform legislation, the center was elevated to an institute reported [applause] . [applause] several of us met with dr. francis collins about the desire and need and imperative to elevate the center to an institute. dr. collins is responsible as well. the center has all of the prerogatives and abilities that an institute has. if it has all of those authorities and responsibilities, it is an institute so why not call it an institute? [laughter] congress agreed with us and indeed passed legislation to establish this instant -- this national institute for minority health and health disparities research. we are very pleased with that. it was not too long ago we had our first minority surgeon general who had previously been deputy director of the national institute of