2012 Medical Alumnus of the Year

Lucius Marion Lampton, M.D., FAAFP
Past President, Mississippi Academy of Family Physicians
Editor, Journal of the Mississippi State Medical Association
Chairman, Mississippi State Board of Health
Past President, South Pike School Board

A fifth generation Mississippi physician, Dr. Lucius “Luke” Lampton of Magnolia, Chairman of the Mississippi State Board of Health and Editor of the Journal of the Mississippi State Medical Association, was born in Jackson on March 26, 1966, the son of Dr. and Mrs. T. D. (Bob) Lampton. After serving as president of his class and editor of the school newspaper, The Raider Rampage, he graduated first in his class at Jackson Academy in 1984. After being taught by the famed historian Shelby Foote, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with Honors in History from Rhodes College in Memphis in 1988, editing the student newspaper The Sou’wester during his junior and senior years. At Rhodes, he also received the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award for service and leadership and lettered all four years on the varsity tennis team. He graduated from the University of Mississippi School of Medicine in Jackson in 1993, editing the student newspaper The Murmur and winning a William Carlos Williams Poetry Award, an annual award for North America’s medical students, for his poem “witchdoctor.” He also won Outstanding Senior Medical Student given by the UMMC
Department of Psychiatry. In 1996, he completed a residency in Family Medicine at University of Mississippi School of Medicine, and became board certified by the American Board of Family Practice. In 2005, he was awarded the degree of Fellow by the American Academy of Family Physicians. He is licensed to practice medicine in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Ontario (for his annual service as a volunteer canoe camp doctor on Lake Temagami).

Dr. Lampton practices family medicine at the Magnolia Clinic in Magnolia. He is Chief of Staff and Medical Director of Beacham Memorial Hospital in Magnolia. He is Past President of the Mississippi Academy of Family Physicians and has served as Vice President,Secretary, and on its Board of Trustees. He is also chief Editor of the Journal of the Mississippi State Medical Association. He is currently Secretary of the South Central Medical Society, and has served as President and President-Elect in the past. He also serves as a Clinical Associate Professor at Tulane Medical School in Family and Community Medicine (where he has been nominated for Teacher of the Year) and as a part of the clinical faculty for the University of Mississippi School of Medicine, training over one hundred medical students and residents. His rankings and evaluations by the students are consistently excellent, and he has also trained several students from medical schools in Germany and Latin America. He is Associate Councilor for Mississippi for the Southern Medical Association. He has also served on the board of Information and Quality Healthcare (IQH), the state Medicare Quality Review organization. On that board, he has served on the Executive Committee, and as Vice Chairman of the Board and as Treasurer. He has also served since 2003 on the UMMC Alumni Association Board of Directors. In 2006, he was appointed by the Vice Chancellor to serve on the Family Medicine Chair Search Advisory Committee for the University. In 2009-10, he served on the Search Committee for the Vice Chancellor (and Dean) of the University of Mississippi Medical Center (and School of Medicine), and he currently serves on the University’s Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) Task Force, which was appointed in 2010 by the Vice Dean to prepare for the University of Mississippi School of Medicine’s accreditation site visit in February 2012. Dr. Lampton was involved in the creation and establishment of the nationally recognized Mississippi Rural Physicians Scholarship Program and currently serves on the legislative commission which oversees it. (He also served as the first Chairman of the MRPSP Commission for a two year period.) He also played a critical role in the establishment of the Mississippi Office of Physician Workforce in April 2012.

He has long served as the medical director of Compassus Hospice of McComb, Mississippi,which has been cited for excellence and quality in national rankings. He was recently selected to serve as one of six physicians to serve on the National Advisory Board of Hospice Compassus and along with Senator Bill Frist addressed its medical directors at its annual national meeting in October 2011. He also serves as medical director of several nursing homes in McComb and Tylertown, Mississippi, and Kentwood, Louisiana. He also serves as medical director of Oceans Geriatric/Psychiatric Hospital in Kentwood, Louisiana.

Dr. Lampton is widely known for historic preservation efforts and served a term on the Board of Directors for the Mississippi Historical Society. He is currently President of the Foundation of Mississippi History, which is spearheading efforts to create a new museum of history for Mississippi. (Gov. William Winter held this position prior to Dr. Lampton) In 2004, the Mississippi Historical Society awarded him a resolution of merit for his efforts on behalf of history in the state. He also serves on the South Pike School Board, having served two terms as president; on the Mississippi School Board Association Board of Directors, as a Presidential appointee, 2011-12; on the Board of the Mississippi School of the Arts Foundation; and on the Advisory Board for the Center for Southern Culture at Ole Miss. In 2005, the Pike County Board of Supervisors presented him a framed resolution of commendation for his decade of medical service and community leadership in the county. Dr. Lampton presently serves on Momentum Mississippi and also served on Governor Barbour’s Transition Team, serving in leadership committee roles on health care.

In 2006, Barbour appointed Dr. Lampton to the Mississippi State Board of Health, and in February, 2007, he was elected Chairman of the Board of Health. Dr. Lampton took a leadership role in stabilizing the Mississippi Department of Health, which was then in chaos. In April, 2007, Dr. Lampton was reappointed to a six year term on the Board of Health by Gov. Barbour, and in July 2007, he was reelected Chairman of the new board. He has served as chairman since that time and is one of the longest serving chairmen of the Board of Health in Mississippi’s history. In that capacity, he has given speeches at public health events across the state and has interacted closely with the legislative leadership of the state in the interests of the department and the state.

Dr. Lampton has been prominent in organized medicine at a national level, serving as a Mississippi delegate to the American Medical Association from 2006 to the present and also (since 2004) as an alternate delegate from Mississippi to the American Academy of Family Physicians Congress of Delegates. In that capacity, Dr. Lampton has authored or introduced more than a dozen resolutions which have been acted on at a national level.

Since October 1997, he has served as editor and publisher of the Magnolia Gazette, an award-winning weekly newspaper in Magnolia, Mississippi. Under his guidance, the Gazette has won more than three dozen state press awards, including first place awards for his editorials. His newspaper has branched into book publishing as well, publishing such acclaimed books as “Hometown,” by Mac Gordon; “Keeper of the Dream,” by R. C. Wood; “The Divorcee’s Cookbook,” by Ann Jackson; and “Soul Places,” by Lamar Massingill. He has also published articles and book reviews in various publications, from the Mark Twain Journal to the Journal of Mississippi History, on Mark Twain, Eudora Welty, and Mississippi medical history, with his work being featured on televised programs on BBC (“Old New World” 1999), History Channel (“Camp Van Dorn Mystery” 2001), CSPAN (“Mark Twain, 2001), Mississippi ETV (“Statewide Live,” 2002), and Turner South (“Liars and Legends,” on Mark Twain, 2003). His work on Mark Twain and medical history have been noted internationally in both British and Russian publications. He authored several entries and the appendix for the Mark Twain Encyclopedia, published by Garland Press in 1993. He also served as Associate Editor of Medicine and authored ten entries, largely on medical history, for the upcoming Mississippi Encyclopedia. He spoke on physician/writer Walker Percy at the 2004 Oxford Conference for the Book. He also spoke at the unveiling of the Mississippi Hall of Fame portrait at the Old Capitol for longtime State Health Officer Dr. Felix J. Underwood in 2000. As Editor of the Journal of the Mississippi State Medical Association, he has authored hundreds of articles and editorials which appeared within its pages, beginning as early as 1994.

He is married to the former Louise Lyell of Jackson and they have two sons, Crawford and Garland. Louise, a CPA, serves as Associate Business Manager of the Gazette, and Crawford, age 15, has served as a reviewer for restaurants and hot dog stands, as well as past service as the official “Gazette Weather Watcher.” He is currently a photographer for the Gazette.
Garland, age 13, enjoys playing tennis and reading books. Garland is currently “Autos Editor” of the Gazette. Both currently attend St. Andrews Episcopal School in Jackson, where Crawford serves as President of his class and both serve on the tennis team.