Biography

Deirdre Phillips, MD, MPH, ABQAURP, currently serves as the Chief Medical Officer of United Healthcare Community Plan- Mississippi. In addition, she is the President of Global Family Medicine, PLLC and Professor Emeritus of Family Medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi. Born in Dublin, Ireland, she graduated from Newcomb College and the Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, Louisiana. Dr. Phillips completed a Family Medicine residency at UMMC, and was a member of the faculty there from 1976-2006. Dr. Phillips was the first woman chosen to head a clinical department at the Medical Center, serving as the Chair of the Department of Family Medicine for 19 years. After retiring from the University Medical Center, she received her Master of Public Health degree with highest honors from San Jose State University in San Jose, California in August of 2009. She is a Diplomate of the American Board of Family Medicine, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians. Dr. Phillips was the 1999 recipient of the AAFP's Thomas W. Johnson Award as the nation's Outstanding Teacher of Family Medicine, and was named a Kellogg National Leadership Fellow and Salzburg Seminar Fellow. She is the author of numerous medical journal articles, and the Associate Editor of four editions of Taylor's Principles and Practice of Family Medicine medical textbook. She created the first Mississippi Area Health Education Centers located in the Mississippi Delta, at the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and at Alcorn State University. She has served on the Board of Directors of the National Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance, the Mississippi African-American Sons and Daughters Foundation, and the Mississippi Board of Massage Therapy. Dr. Phillips has dedicated her life and career to the medically underserved, and to assuring high quality health care for all the world's people.