Dr. Joye Maureen Carter
Dr. Joye Carter, 1983
Dr. Joye Maureen Carter was born in Ohio in 1957. She received her medical degree from Howard University College of Medicine in 1983. Dr. Carter completed her postgraduate medical education at Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C. and at Booth Memorial Hospital in New York. She is board certified in forensic, anatomical, and clinical pathology.
Dr. Carter served as a major in the U.S. Air Force and as the deputy chief medical examiner for the Armed Forces Medical Examiner Department in the Walter Reed Army Hospital complex until 1992.
After her military service, Dr. Carter became the chief medical examiner for the District of Columbia. In doing so, she became the first black female chief medical examiner in the history of the United States. In 1996, she left Washington, D.C. and moved to Houston. She served as the chief medical examiner for Harris County until October 2002, the first female and first African American to lead a medical examiner’s office in Texas.
Dr. Carter is a past president of Houston Medical Forum. Over the past two decades, she has held faculty appointments at several universities, including George Washington University, Howard University, the University of Texas School of Public Health, the University of Texas Health Science Center, and Baylor College of Medicine.
Dr. Carter has served in various community organizations. She was the first director of the Healthy People 2000 Anti-Violence campaign in Washington, D.C. In Houston, she launched a teen driving program called Saving Our Kids. She has written two books, My Strength Comes from Within and I Speak for the Dead.
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