Ceiling Shattering Surgeon, Dr. Velma Scantlebury 

By Dana Malcolm 

Staff Writer 

#USA, March 2, 2023 – Born in Barbados in 1955, Dr. Velma Scantlebury is the first Black female transplant surgeon in United States History.  A native of Goodland, St. Michaels Parish, she spent almost all her childhood at home, moving to the US when she was 15 years old.

By that time she says she already knew she wanted to be a physician. Despite racial and gender stereotyping from her teachers at every level, she worked hard enough through high school and pre-med to get into two Ivy League medical programs, Yale and Columbia.

She completed her medical degree at Columbia University and then a General Surgery Residency at the Harlem Hospital. Dr. Scantlebury wanted to take care of children but turned away from her first love, a residency in general pediatric surgery; she took a fellowship at the Pitts Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute in pediatric transplants instead and decided to make it her career.

It was an historic first in two aspects, not just because of her race but because it was incredibly rare for a surgeon to specialize in transplants for children.

In 1989 she was bestowed with her Doctor of Surgery officially becoming the first black woman to specialize in her field.  She worked at the Pitt Institute for 14 years.

Despite a career characterized by racial discrimination, she carried on, serving as the Director of Kidney Transplant Surgery at the University of South Alabama Gulf Coast Regional Transplant Centre and Director of the kidney transplant program at Christiana Care Health System.

With more than 2000 kidney transplants under her belt, she has also worked to educate the Black community on Kidney Disease throughout her career and was a regular on the Top Doctors in America List.  She was also given the Order of Barbados Gold Crown of Merit.  A living legend, Scantlebury is now retired but still works at several universities as a professor.

As of 2021, there were 12 black female transplant surgeons in the US following in her footsteps according to Newsweek.

According to her website, Scantlebury’s special interests include, ”Researching the end results of donation and transplantation in African Americans, increasing organ donation in the African-American community through education and awareness.”