If ever a person was destined to be a physician, it’s Charles Crutchfield III, M.D. In 1963, his mother was the first African-American woman to graduate from the University of Minnesota Medical School. She got pregnant her first year of med school (Crutchfield’s father was also a medical student at the time) and the family ended up in the Star Tribune as a human-interest story with a newspaper photo of three-year-old Charles pressing a stethoscope against his father’s heart.
“People would say, ‘Are you going to be a doctor like your parents?’, and I learned quickly that the acceptable answer was yes,” he recalls.
Sure enough, after a brief foray into the military, Crutchfield followed his parent’s example. He’s now medical director of Eagan-based Crutchfield Dermatology, and an award-winning professor of dermatology at the University of Minnesota Medical School.
The main body of Crutchfield’s research is in the treatment of psoriasis, an inflammatory skin condition that affects about five percent of the population. He has devoted his time to the disease because it is a major quality-of-life issue for so many people.
“I remember when I was a resident, I had a patient who had really bad psoriasis on his elbows and knees,” he says. “I got him on a treatment program that cleared him up completely. He came in the office and and started crying and crying, and he said, ‘I’ve lived across the street from Lake Harriet for 30 years, and this is the first time I was able to put a short-sleeved shirt and shorts on, walk around the lake, and let the sun hit my arms and legs.’”
In recent years, Crutchfield has delved into DNA research, trying to better understand the genes that control psoriasis. He’s also interested in ethnic skin conditions. He has co-authored a dermatology textbook, and his Web site won an award for its educational content.
Dr. Crutchfield uses his success to support a wide variety of causes.
“I figure if I am a member of the community and I have the ability to give back, it’s my duty to do so,” he says. “Honestly, as corny as it sounds, I stand on the shoulders of giants. I would be nowhere if it wasn’t for all the people that came before me.”
An ardent baseball fan, Crutchfield helps recruit physician volunteers for the Minnesota Twins’ skin cancer screening program. He is a benefactor to the Reading Center, a national diagnostic and educational program for people with dyslexia, and this winter sponsored 18 scholarships for minority premedical students to attend a forum on applying to medical school. Over the past five years, he has also provided full scholarships for approximately 10 nurses to attend the Dermatology Nurses’ Association national convention. The scholarships seemed a strange expenditure, but he had an inkling his investment would pay off, so he implemented it in his typical, enthusiastic fashion: Full steam ahead.
“I love Gomez from the old TV show The Addams Family,” he says, referring to the show’s patriarch. “Any idea that came up, he’d say ‘Capital idea! Let’s do it!’ I want to be like him.”
His zeal has paid off.
“The nurses come back fired up, and they do a better job of taking care of patients,” he says. “In the long run you’ll make ten times as much as you spend sending them, as far as better patient care and employee retention. That’s the nice thing about having a practice. I don’t have to ask anybody else if I can do it. I can just say ‘Do it!’”
