County Public Health Official Leaves Job at 78

Dr. James G. Haughton, medical director for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, had so many responsibilities that when he retired Monday at age 78, he’ll be replaced by two people.

“He’s a phenomenal person and he did a tremendous amount of work. He worked too much,” said Dr. A. Belinda Towns, the interim medical director and one of the people slated to fill Haughton’s position.

Haughton began his career as an immigrant student from the Caribbean who was the only black person in his medical school class. He is ending it as leader of the county’s enormous public health division, which deals with issues such as containing tuberculosis and protecting the public from possible bioterrorism.

Haughton, who has spent 17 years with the county department and its hospitals, has managed the county’s communicable disease programs, the largest county public health laboratory in California and the county’s 11 public health centers.

He also gained attention over the years for controversial statements. One such statement was made in 1987, when, as head of Houston’s health department, he said breast cancer was a more serious threat to public health in the city than AIDS.

He also was at the center of past efforts to improve L.A. County’s troubled King/Drew Medical Center.

Through it all, Haughton said, his goal was to get people to adopt healthy behaviors, such as exercise and eating proper foods and to provide healthcare to those least likely to receive it.

“Our biggest challenge is to get our public to recognize that they’re really our partners in keeping our communities healthy,” Haughton said in a recent interview.

Haughton himself is a good role model.

“He practiced what he preached,” Town said. “He was in the gym most mornings at 78. Who can say that?”

Haughton was born on March 30, 1925, in Panama City, Panama. He was raised by his mother, Alice Gray Haughton, and, after his father’s death, was helped by Casper Omphroy, a family friend and entrepreneur.

Omphroy “promised me, when I was in grade school and said I wanted to be a doctor, that if I worked my way through college, he’d pay my way through medical school, and he did,” Haughton recalled.

Haughton graduated from medical school in 1950 from what is now Loma Linda University, a Seventh-day Adventist school in San Bernardino County. He said he soon discovered obstacles as he applied for medical internships in the United States.

“I began to realize that the color of my skin, which had never been a problem for me in Panama ... was a problem for me here in this country,” he said.

He said that, in his application letters, he wrote, “If you don’t accept blacks, just let me know, because I can’t afford to spring for the transcripts just to get rejected.”

Later, in 1951, he was accepted as an intern at Unity Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. As he completed his training as an obstetrician and gynecologist, he saw that poor people, who were often black, were more frequently used as “teaching material” for interns and residents.

He opened a private obstetrics practice and later served as a medical administrative officer in the United States Navy. His public health career began in New York City, where he developed new postgraduate training programs for medical schools and hospitals. He came to Los Angeles in 1980, where he ran operations at the Charles R. Drew Postgraduate Medical School.

In 1983, Haughton left to run the health department in Houston. After his remarks declaring breast cancer a greater health threat than AIDS, he was criticized by AIDS activists. Explaining his statement, Haughton said that about 1,000 people in Houston died from AIDS in 1987, but 3,000 women per year were dying from breast cancer.

In 1985, Haughton faced opposition for committing a local drifter infected with HIV to a psychiatric hospital because the man had continued to have unprotected sex with unsuspecting people. The man was released after 72 hours against Haughton’s recommendations.

“That was a very frustrating time for me because I was getting criticism from people in other parts of the country who didn’t have the same problem that I did,” he said.

Haughton returned to L.A. in 1987 to become chief of staff for the county’s King/Drew Medical Center. Two years later, the center was under siege because of patient care problems and nurse and staff shortages. It faced the loss of its accreditation, funding and license. Haughton was part of the effort led by then-administrator Edward Renford to reform the center.

In 1993, Haughton left King/Drew to become a health policy advisor to the county health department and became medical director three years later. But he still has strong opinions about the hospital, now under fire for dramatic mistakes in patient care. Haughton said the hospital continues to rely too heavily on interns, nurses and residents without enough supervision from veteran physicians.

He also has been outspoken about health department policies.

Last year, he publicly scolded staffers for losing $10 million in federal grants by not hiring researchers and administrators fast enough.

Though Haughton is officially retiring, he will still head the department’s public health research review committee. He also has strong views about the future of public health, which he said requires a global, not local focus.

“It used to be that if there was an outbreak of anything in Africa or South America, we’d hear about it on the news, but we’d never see it,” he said about emerging diseases. “Now, anything that happens in Africa can be here tomorrow.”