NOVANT HEALTH

Dr. Ophelia Garmon-Brown, a physician and minister who earned the Order of the Long Leaf Pine and The Charlotte Post Foundation Luminary award for community service, died Wednesday after a long battle with cancer.

Dr. Ophelia Garmon-Brown, The Post’s 2019 Luminary, has died after a long battle with cancer.

Dr. Garmon-Brown dedicated her professional and public life to healing and for promoting opportunity. A board-certified family physician and chief community wellness and health equity executive at Novant Health, she was also an associate minister at Charlotte’s St. Luke Baptist Church.

“I consider myself a person who was blessed to have two amazing service opportunities,” she told The Post in 2019.

Dr. Garmon-Brown’s contributions as a physician and chief community wellness and healthy equity executive at Novant Health also earned her the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, North Carolina’s highest civilian honor, in 2018.

“Ophelia is a remarkable woman with extraordinary gifts and talents,” Novant Health President and CEO Carl Armato said at the time. “As a physician, minister, volunteer, advocate, community leader — she embodies the spirit of giving and caring for others.”

Dr. Garmon-Brown, a Detroit native, moved to eastern North Carolina with her family and earned a degree in biology from North Carolina Central University, followed by a medical degree from UNC Chapel Hill and a master’s from Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education. Her interest in medicine was sparked when her father died from encephalitis.

“I started saying when I was four that I wanted to be a doctor,” she said. “I wanted to save all daddies.”

Dr. Garmon-Brown was the first Black woman alumnus of Carolinas Medical Center residency program, where she concentrated on family medicine. Her last two decades as a medical professional were at Novant Health while also serving as a medical missionary in countries such as Uganda, South Africa, Jamaica, Kenya, Guyana.

“A devastating loss for our @QueensUniv community, the City @CLT.gov, & human kind,” Queens University of Charlotte President Dan Lugo tweeted Wednesday. “Our trustee emerita, quickly became one of my favorite advisors & friends. We will all miss her terribly but remember her well by celebrating the gift that she was to each of us and our community.”

Dr. Garmon-Brown co-founded the Charlotte Community Health Clinic, Mecklenburg County’s first free clinic to earn approval as federally qualified facility, and was the first Black person elected president of the Mecklenburg County Medical Society and was medical director for the Salvation Army’s Women’s and Children’s Shelter’s health clinic, as well as a volunteer at the Charlotte Pregnancy Care Center.

Away from medicine, Dr. Garmon-Brown co-chaired the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Opportunity Task Force, established to address disparities regarding upward economic mobility.

“Ophelia’s contributions to the community of Charlotte and the people of North Carolina has been nothing short of amazing,” Armato said. “Some say nobody cares how much you know until they know you care, and we surely know how much Ophelia cares.”

Comments