The National Medical Association is devastated to announce that one of our members, Dr. Preston Phillips, was among those killed in yesterday’s mass shooting at the Saint Francis Health System in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Dr. Rachel Villanueva, President of NMA, issued the following statement:
“We send our deepest condolences to Dr. Preston Phillips’ family, friends, and colleagues, who lost a loved one entirely too soon. Our community of African American physicians is small and Dr. Phillips was a beloved member of our Association. A member of the newly reactivated Oklahoma Society of the NMA, he supported the NMA for decades, even when there wasn’t an active presence in the state. The grief we feel over his loss is overwhelming.”
“There has been a gut-wrenching, unacceptable loss of life recently. There is not enough time in between tragedies to complete the stages of grief before we are hurtled back to denial. But we, as a society, cannot resign to this endless cycle of grief and violence. Gun violence can be prevented. Military-grade weapons have no place on the streets. Individuals under the age of 21 should not be allowed to buy weapons. Requiring background checks and eliminating ghost guns are the very least we could do.”
“The string of tragedies from Buffalo to Uvalde to Tulsa and the numerous other mass shootings and death by gun violence in-between must spur lawmakers to take these simple steps to prevent human carnage and respect the sanctity of life as we physicians do. For the NMA it is personal, as we mourn one of our own–a consummate physician who dedicated his life to the service of others. We will continue to honor his legacy by putting an end to gun violence.”
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The NMA promotes the collective interests of physicians and patients of African descent. We carry out this mission by serving as the collective voice of physicians of African descent and a leading force for parity in medicine, elimination of health disparities and promotion of optimal health.
