Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center is being renamed to honor the health system's first Black chief resident in cardiac surgery, Levi Watkins, MD.
The center will now be called the Levi Watkins Jr., M.D., Outpatient Center, according to a June 12 press release from John Hopkins University. The name change is a part of the Diverse Names and Narratives Project, a project that aims to honor people, specifically from underrepresented groups, from the institution's history.
Dr. Watkins was one of the first in the world to perform an implantation of an automatic heart defibrillator in a human in 1980. Dr. Watkins died in April 2015 at age 70.