ANTONIA+NOVELLO



__//**CHILDHOOD**//__ ==The future Surgeon General of the United States was born Antonia Ceollo in the small town of Fajardo, Puerto Rico. She was born with an abnormality of the colon. Being too young, she could not have the operation. To add on to the family's problems her father died when Ceollo was only eight, although surgery might have corrected her condition at that age, she had to wait another ten years to receive EFFECTIVE treatment.==

===Antonia's mother, a school teacher and later high school principal, stressed the importance of education from an early age. Especially after Ceollos' father died education was all Antonia and her mother had left. Antonia was very mature for her age, and graduated from high school at age 15.===

__**//COLLEGE//**__

===While attending the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras, she finally underwent surgery to correct her medical condition. Complications from this operation were to trouble her for the next two years. At age 20, she traveled to the continental United States for treatment at the famous Mayo clinic, where she received an operation that resolved the last of these complications.===

===Because of her past medical issues, shegrew up wanting to become a doctor. Antonia went to college and got her Doctor of Medicine degree from the Univeristy of Puerto Rico at San Juan in 1970. Also in 1970, she wed Joseph R. Novello, a Navy flight surgeon who later became a psychiatrist. ===

In 1990, President George Bush appointed Antonia Novello to be Surgeon General of the United States.
===The **Surgeon General of the United States** is the operational head of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and being the operational head of the Public Health Service, the surgeon general is also the leading spokesperson on matters of public health in the federal government. The Surgeon General's office and staff are known as the **Office of the Surgeon General.** She was both the first woman and the first Latin American to be appointed to this post. Although she never shrank from controversy, Dr. Novello was an unusually popular Surgeon General, winning special praises for her campaigns to address the health problems of America's young people, whom she called "a generation at risk."===

===In 1993, DR. Novello served the UNICEF, the United Nations' children's health organization, as Special Representative for Health and Nutrition. Having this job, she traveled the world from Peru to Nepal. From 1999 to 2006, she served as Commissioner of Health for the State of New York.===

=== "I survived many times in my life by learning to laugh at myself, " Novello told the //Saturday Evening Post'//s Krucoff. "That's the best medicine. But I also became very self-assured and capable of saying that if I could do that, I can do anything." **Through out all Novellos' struggles she still became the best she could be. **  ===