Jimmy Carter’s lasting legacy in public health
Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel highlights the former president’s global efforts to educate on public health and the awareness he brought to melanoma and hospice care.
When it comes to Gallup’s “Most Admired Man list,” Jimmy Carter is number three in the top 10 finishes, behind only Rev. Billy Graham and Ronald Reagan.
From 1946 to 2020, Carter made the list 29 times, according to Gallup.
Carter, the nation’s 39th president, died Sunday, Dec. 29, at the age of 100. He served a single term as president, and will also be remembered for his decades of humanitarian work.
“When Gallup asked Americans to retrospectively evaluate Carter’s presidency in June 2023, 57% said they approved of the job he did, and 36% disapproved,” a Gallup blog reads. “His retrospective approval ranks in the bottom half of presidents, better than Nixon and Trump, but similar to George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.”
JIMMY CARTER, 39TH PRESIDENT, REMEMBERED FOR HIS INTEGRITY AND DEVOTION TO HUMANITY
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter passed away on Dec. 29, 2024. (Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Carter earned a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development,” its website states.
The Plains, Georgia, native undertook peace negotiations, campaigned for human rights and worked for social welfare while President George W. Bush was planning war on Iraq in the fall of 2002.
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, left, President Jimmy Carter, center, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin clasp hands on the North Lawn of the White House after signing the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in Washington on March, 26, 1979. (AP Photo/Bob Daugherty, File)
“According to the Chairman of the Nobel Committee, Carter ought to have been awarded the Prize as early as in 1978, when he successfully mediated a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel,” the Nobel Prize website says. “As ex-President, Carter conducted an active peace and mediation campaign which sometimes seemed to run counter to official US policy.”
The Carter Center, which Carter opened with his wife, Rosalynn, in 1982, has been a pioneer of election observation, monitoring at least 113 elections in Africa, Latin America, and Asia since 1989. In perhaps its most widely hailed public health effort, the organization recently announced that only 14 human cases of Guinea worm disease were reported in all of 2021, the result of years of public health campaigns to improve access to safe drinking water in Africa.
Former President Jimmy Carter is seen here at the starting day of the 24th Jimmy Carter Work Project in Los Angeles, California, on Oct. 29, 2007. (Mario Anzuoni/File Photo)
For his humanitarian work, Craig Shirley, a Reagan biographer and historian, said Carter will be remembered as “one of the best ex-presidents of the 20th century.”
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“We’re going to remember him kindly. He was a terrific former president with what he did with the Carter Center and the various initiatives around the country. His book writing stands out [as does] his charitable works. So, he goes down in his history as an extraordinarily good former president.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.