Bill Frist

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Bill Frist : biography

February 22, 1952 –

As part of SCORE’s work, Frist presents the State of Education in Tennessee report at the beginning of each year, a comprehensive look at the state’s efforts to improve public education. SCORE also awards the on an annual basis, which is given annually to the elementary, middle, and high school in Tennessee, along with one school district, that have most dramatically improved student achievement.

Frist has voiced support for higher academic standards in grades K-12, reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and improving efforts to identify, foster, and reward effective teaching.

ONE campaign

After his Senate career he became a Co-Chair of ONE VOTE ’08, an initiative of the ONE campaign, with Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD). According to , "ONE Vote ’08 is an unprecedented, non-partisan campaign to make global health and extreme poverty foreign policy priorities in the 2008 presidential election."http://www.onevote08.org/aboutone.php He traveled to Africa in support of various initiatives for the ONE campaign in July 2008 and an extensive blog about his trip exists, complete with videos.http://www.one.org/blog/category/one/onestaffafricatrip/fristjulyafricatrip/

Global Health and Hope Through Healing Hands

In addition to Senator Frist’s decades of medical mission work and commitments to other global health organizations, his main thrust in global health is via his Nashville-based (HTHH), a nonprofit 501(c) 3 whose mission is to promote improved quality of life for citizens and communities around the world using health as a currency for peace. Jenny Eaton Dyer, Ph.D. has served as CEO/Executive Director since 2008.

Under the umbrella of health diplomacy, HTHH includes efforts for child survival/maternal health, clean water, extreme poverty, and global disease such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and Malaria. Strategically, HTHH promotes global partnership by working hand-in-hand with leading organizations that best address these issues in developing nations.

Since 2004 HTHH has invested more than $3.5 million in charities in both the United States and abroad. These investments have been in support of infrastructure, sustainable health development, education, healthcare, and emergency relief.

HTHH’s flagship program is the Frist Global Health Leaders program. This program sponsors young health professionals as students and residents to travel to underserved areas to promote peace through health in communities and clinical settings. These students spend between one-three month(s) focusing on service to those in need, alongside the work of training community health workers.

National attention

Frist first entered the national spotlight when two Capitol police officers were shot inside the United States Capitol by Russell Eugene Weston Jr. in 1998. Frist, the closest doctor, provided immediate medical attention (he was unable to save the two officers, but was able to save Weston). He also was the Congressional spokesman during the 2001 anthrax attacks.

As the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he helped Republicans win back the Senate in the 2002 midterm election. His committee collected $66.4 million for 2001–2002, 50% more than the previous year. Shortly afterwards, Senator Trent Lott made comments at a Strom Thurmond birthday celebration in which he said that if Thurmond’s presidential bid of 1948 had succeeded, "we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years". In the aftermath, Lott resigned his position as Senate Majority Leader and Frist was chosen unanimously by Senate Republicans as his replacement. He became the third youngest Senate Majority Leader in US history. In his 2005 book, Herding Cats, A Lifetime in Politics, Lott accuses Frist of being "one of the main manipulators" in the debate that ended Lott’s leadership in the Republican Senate. Lott wrote that Frist’s actions amounted to a "personal betrayal". Frist "… didn’t even have the courtesy to call and tell me personally that he was going to run … If Frist had not announced exactly when he did, as the fire was about to burn out, I would still be majority leader of the Senate today," Lott wrote.