Meet 2024-2025 Alliance President - Donna Corrado

“Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.”  - Baltasar Gracian

Donna Glasford Corrado, RN, Mexico, Missouri, was installed as the 2024-2025 Missouri State Medical Alliance President on April 6, 2024, in St. Louis, during the MSMA’s Alliance Centennial Annual Meeting.

Born in Biloxi, Mississippi, and raised in Vandalia, Missouri, Donna graduated Deaconess Hospital School of Nursing in St. Louis.  She married Joseph Corrado, MD, in 1976, and moved to New York, where he pursued residency in general and vascular surgery, and she worked on the medical-surgical floor of Albany Medical Center. 

An opportunity arose to return to Missouri and fill a surgical gap in Mexico, where Dr. Corrado was to join Dr. Ray Wilbers in 1982.

With a family of six, Donna began volunteering in the community: as nurse at the children’s parochial school, the Red Cross, the YMCA board, and the American Cancer Society. She was also assistant coach for girls’ softball, a Girl Scout and Boy Scout camp nurse, and was active in the local GFWC Civic club, helping to initiate the “Safety Town” program and rising to district president.

At the behest of the Dr. H. Peter Ekern, Dr. Corrado joined the Missouri State Medical Association, and Donna began as president of the Audrain Medical Society (Auxiliary), chartering bylaws with the help of the MSMA Auxiliary leadership.

In that first year, the Mexico Auxiliary undertook a project which garnered honorable mention from the Southern Medical Association (Auxiliary) when they hired a “Peer Pressure Reversal” expert, Karen Scott, to speak to most of the schools and parents in the county.

In 1988, the family joined the Missouri Country Cloggers and spent many weekends practicing or performing across the state. 1995 saw the entire family on a medical mission trip to Hidalgo in the country of Mexico, where she was the surgical circulator for Dr. Frank Reiger, doing cataract surgery.

In August of 2004 she drove alone in a motor home to Desoto County, Florida, in the wake of devastating hurricanes to help make a difference. There she worked with Catholic Relief Services as a nurse for three weeks. That year she met the first of their 11 grandchildren.

Donna continues to assist in her husband’s busy practice. Nursing, finances, OSHA, coding, and computerized records makes up her busy day in the office.

When the County Auxiliary dissolved, Donna continued with the MSMA Alliance, contributing time and talents on standing committees or an elected office, culminating in the Presidency from 2006-2007. Attending and participating in the American Medical Alliance through the years and appointed to various committees, Donna has never sought an office at the national level, preferring to stay local, and continuing to help with MSMA and Alliance.

Donna is a recipient of the Sandy Mitchell Alliance Member of the Year award.  Also, as the executive producer of “Code Blue” Resuscitating Rural Surgery, a documentary, she traveled the country with her daughter, Meredith, in a motorhome, minding the children, while the film was being shot and edited, and finally released and celebrated in 2014.

Accompanying her husband, the 2018-2019 President of MSMA, she traveled to most local and state meetings with him, carrying membership materials and promoting the Alliance for the state and the AMA.

The last few years have seen Donna working diligently to restore a full-service healthcare facility to her home town of Mexico. Currently, she is on the Healthcare Leadership committee and President of the Board of the Audrain Regional Medical Center.

Presiding as the MSMA Alliance president during its Centennial year (2024-2025) is a joy and a challenge. Promoting what makes us alike (physicians and physician partners) rather than dwelling on the ways we are different; she is striving to give courage and hope to those Missouri counties now divided by hospital interests to reunite with their former Alliance members and tap into the incredible pool of medical student and resident spouses.

She wants to encourage the Direct Members (those without a county Alliance) to continue at the state level and contribute to their counties using simple, readymade projects (like “Stop the Bleed”, “Smoking Is NOT for Me”, “Physician Family Day” or “National Doctor’s Day”) and giving recognition to the county medical societies.

Sana Saleh, MSMA Alliance president 2023-2024, laid the groundwork at MSMA Alliance for cooperation with the Auxiliary of the Missouri Association of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons, which Donna is seeking to solidify with some joint meetings prepared by both entities.

In this time of insurers and private equity firms dictating the parameters of care in hospitals and practices, physicians are consistently second guessed and frustrated, reinventing care when their standards are circumvented by prior authorization permissions being denied. The government is squeezing in that space between the physician and the patient. 

As the family of medicine, seeing the moral injury of our own, we must make the time to teach resilience, pivoting, and courage to stand up for themselves to our physicians. The Missouri Physicians Health Program, which assists impaired physicians and healthcare workers, will be proffered at every gathering.

This year, the Alliance is planning to meet at the same time as the MSMA for the Alliance to include partners (spouses).   As we gain mutual respect, the net result of a more substantial and prolific family of medicine will be realized.

“Cento Anni” a toast to 100 years!