One of eighteen children of a St. Francis County couple, Eddie Reed would become a nationally known cancer researcher, oncologist and expert on health care disparity in the U.S. Reed was born in Hughes in 1953 and while a sophomore at Philander Smith College was picked to work in the National Cancer Institute in Maryland, inspiring him to a career in cancer research.
After getting his medical degree at Yale, he became a career officer and researcher in the NCI. In 1995 he became the first Black branch chief at NCI, leading the Clinical Pharmacology Branch. After twenty years at NCI he worked at the University of West Virginia, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the University of South Alabama, and finally became the first clinical chief of the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health.
Reed’s remarkable career ended when he ironically developed cancer, dying in 2014. He’s buried at Edmondson in Crittenden County.
To learn more, visit encyclopediaofarkansas.net.
Read the Encyclopedia entry at Reed, Eddie - Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
