Meet Dr. Benjamin

Samuel D. Benjamin, M.D. grew up in the Bronx and developed a love of culture early on in his life. Bilingual with fluency in both English and Spanish, he received dual medical degrees from the prestigious Universidad De Guadalajara Facultad De Medicina in Mexico and the State University of New York. An exceptional student, he trained at New York University Medical Center in one of the two existing Fifth Pathway programs in the United States at that time.

Entry into a Fifth Pathway program requires that students:

1. Graduate from an accredited American college or university
2. Have studied at a medical school located outside the United States that is listed in the World Health Organization’s World Directory of Medical Schools and which requires a year or more of internship and social service before receiving a medical degree.
3. Students must have completed all formal requirements of their foreign medical school except the final years of internship and social service.[1]

Upon completion of this program, Dr. Benjamin did his residency in Pediatrics and Social Medicine at the Montefiore Medical Center Hospital, the University Hospital and Academic Medical Center of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Because of his outstanding commitment and engagement during his residency, he was invited to serve as Chief Resident during his last year.

Dr. Benjamin’s experiences in both Mexico and New York, coupled with his interest in social medicine,  inspired him to give back to the community in all aspects of his life. One such aspect was to serve as Medical Director for a model primary care program for urban inner cities. Funded jointly by the federal government and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the goal of the program was to develop a cost effective primary care model that would have applications in urban environments. Much of the structure serves as a model of medical home care being espoused by the federal government today. He later became the Medical Director for the Western Hemisphere Region of the International Planned Parenthood Federation where he focused on maternal/child health.

In 1982, Dr. Benjamin moved to Phoenix and helped establish a pediatric and family practice medical group. He served as Medical Director of the nation’s then largest PPO, and joined the advisory board of Humana’s local HMO. Realizing his traditional medical degree as  Primary Care doctor only scratched the surface of patient treatment care, he began to investigate the practice of alternative and integrated medicine more thoroughly. Appreciating the value of what he saw, Dr. Benjamin decided to become an alternative medical practioner as well,  and went on to train in Medical Acupuncture at the UCLA Medical School of Medicine. He later formed the nation’s first mainstream, hospital system affiliated, large scale integrative medical facility, the Arizona Center for Health and Medicine for Catholic Healthcare West.The center and his activities were featured in Life magazine and served as a beacon for future integrative medical facilities.

In 1997 Dr. Benjamin returned to New York to share his knowledge of integrative medicine as professor and Director of the Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the State University of New York, Stony Brook School of Medicine.He later joined Humana, Inc as the Corporate Medical Director for Integrative Strategies, introducing complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to the corporate culture and working to integrate primary care in innovative programs   nationally. He also began speaking on and hosting nationally syndicated radio shows, including the Dr. Sam Show broadcast in English and Spanish. Missing the gratification that comes from patient interaction, Dr. Benjamin left  corporate medicineand returned to practice in Arizona.

Currently, Dr. Benjamin is a practicing Arizona doctor licensed as an allopathic (Western) physician, a licensed homeopathic physician or MD (H) and a certified acupuncturist. He specializes in:

He also serves on the Editorial Board of NaturalStandard.com the nation's premiere source for natural medical data and information, and shares his knowledge and expertise by hosting the radio program "Primary Care" on News/Talk KTAR 92.3 FM Saturdays at 2 PM MST, and will soon be launching a new online medical community, Dr. B TV.

[1] Universidad Autónomia de Guadalajara School of Medicine International Program