Dr. Marilyn Hughes Gaston is a physician and former Assistant Surgeon General of the United States and recently retired Associate Administrator for the Bureau of Primary Health Care (BPHC) within the Health Resources and Services Administration. She was the first African-American woman to direct a Public Health Service Bureau. BPHC has total resources of close to five billion dollars and is responsible for improving access to quality, preventive, primary health care to millions of underserved, minority, underprivileged, disadvantaged people in the United States and its territories and improving the health status of ten million people.


Prior to her appointment as Bureau Director, she was the Director of the Division of Medicine, which provides funding for training grants in Family Medicine, Internal medicine and Pediatrics, etc. Early in her career, Dr. Gaston helped to establish a community health center serving a large African American, low-income population.