Lloyd C. Elam

Lloyd Charles Elam (October 27, 1928 – October 4, 2008) was an American psychiatrist who established the psychiatry department and psychiatric residency program at Meharry Medical College, then served as interim dean before becoming president of the college from 1968 to 1981. Elam opened one of Nashville's first psychiatric day treatment programs.

A native of Arkansas, Elam attended college in Illinois before becoming the first black person to earn a medical degree from the University of Washington School of Medicine. He returned to Illinois for his psychiatry training, and he briefly practiced psychiatry there before joining the faculty at Meharry. Elam was president of Meharry during an $88 million capital campaign. He oversaw the expansion of the school's teaching hospital and the founding of a graduate school for health-related disciplines.

In 1981, with the college and its teaching hospital experiencing financial difficulties, Elam was dismissed as president, and he remained on the faculty until retiring in 1996. He received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University, and he served on the boards of directors for organizations including Kraftco, Merck & Co. and BellSouth Telecommunications.

Early life Elam was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. His father was a carpenter, and his mother insisted that the family walk to their destinations rather than riding segregated city transportation. Elam was 15 when he graduated from Dunbar High School.

After attending a local junior college, he moved to Harvey, Illinois, where he worked at an automotive plant, and he took classes at Roosevelt University in Chicago. Graduating from Roosevelt in 1950, Elam served in the U.S. Army and then went to medical school at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

Elam completed an internship at the University of Illinois and a psychiatry residency in Chicago, Elam joined the psychiatry staff at Chicago's Billings Hospital. In 1961, Elam became an assistant professor at Meharry Medical College and founded its psychiatry department. He started the psychiatry residency at Meharry and created one of the first psychiatric day treatment programs in Nashville.

President of Meharry Medical College Elam became president of Meharry in 1968. He oversaw an $88 million capital campaign in the early 1970s. He said that one of his goals was to triple the size of the student body, and he said that more than half of the money from the capital campaign would be used for faculty salaries and student scholarships. The college added new towers to George W. Hubbard Hospital, the school's teaching facility, and it constructed several other buildings. Meharry also established a graduate school for public health, biochemistry and other health-related fields. Subsequent president Wayne Riley described Elam as "the president who really built the modern-day Meharry."

In the early 1980s, George W. Hubbard Hospital was having difficulty competing in the Nashville hospital market. While only 500,000 people lived in Nashville at the time, the area was saturated with 4,000 hospital beds and two medical schools. Hubbard's status as a private, urban teaching hospital also complicated their financial situation. They were providing $3 million to $4 million in indigent care annually and were only receiving $725,000 per year in reimbursement based on their contract with the City of Nashville. They had to start turning away indigent patients. Several years earlier, Elam wanted to step down as president but the board had asked him to stay. The New York Times said that Elam did not want to give up his role at the time of his 1981 dismissal.

Later life In 1982, Elam was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. The same year, he became a Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Meharry, and he served in that capacity until 1995, when he became volunteer faculty at the school. He became an emeritus professor in 1996.

Elam taught Sunday school and performed community service through First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill in Nashville. Elam and his wife Clara had two children.

On October 4, 2008, Elam died of an apparent heart attack in Jackson, Mississippi. He had begun to feel ill while driving to a meeting in Jackson. Though he asked someone for directions to a hospital, he was found unresponsive in his vehicle a short time later.

Legacy Meharry's Lloyd C. Elam Mental Health Center provides psychiatric services and substance abuse treatment. It opened in 1971 as the Meharry Community Mental Health Center, and it was renamed to honor Elam in 1991.