Dr. Alma Littles, the former director of the Family Practice Residency Program at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital (TMH), will be the keynote speaker for Florida State University Panama City’s Black History Month program.

The community is invited to hear her presentation, “Impact Tomorrow: Becoming a Champion of Change,“ during a luncheon event from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 21. There is no cost for admission.

“My goal in everything I do is to give it my all and hope that while I’m there and once I’m gone, it’s better off than when I started,” Littles said in an interview with the Florida Medical Association website (FLMedical.org). “I also plan to continue to pay it forward and lend my expertise to pursue continued leadership in organized medicine and in my community.”

In addition to Dr. Littles’ address, the event will include selected readings by FSU PC graduate student Madison Kent and performances by the Northside Elementary School Step Team. Lunch will be served.

Littles, who grew up in a family of farm workers in rural Gadsden County, is now the Interim Dean of the FSU College of Medicine and served as senior associate dean for medical education and academic affairs at the medical school for nearly 20 years.

After graduating from the University of Florida College of Medicine, Littles completed her family medicine residency at TMH. Having grown up in Quincy, she returned there following medical school to provide primary care in an area where medical providers were scarce.

“I chose family medicine because I enjoy the relationship aspects of it and the fact that it allowed me to see patients throughout the lifespan—from newborns to the elderly—and care for the total person,” Littles said. “I found that knowing something about my patients’ families and socioeconomic challenges or assets helped me provide better care to them.”

In 2000, not long after FSU College of Medicine was created, she became the acting and then founding chair of the college’s Department of Family Medicine and Rural Health.

“As human beings, we seek care from physicians we feel are competent and caring—words that are also encompassed in the FSU College of Medicine’s mission statement,” Littles said. “But we also want to see a representation of physicians who we feel will understand us because they’ve ’walked in our shoes.’” 

The program will be in the St. Joe Community Lecture Hall at the Holley Academic Center, 4750 Collegiate Drive, Panama City. The event is part of the ongoing Illumination Series at FSU PC, which provides opportunities to hear different viewpoints and learn from unique experiences.

For more about the Illumination series, visit PC.FSU.edu/students/events-programs/illumination.

Throughout February, the Student Affairs office and Student Government Council will also host themed events for students to commemorate Black History Month. For more on these events, see the calendar at PC.FSU.edu/students.