Signature – Durand “Rudy” Macklin

Age: 56
Occupation: Director, Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness & Sports
Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky

Rudy Macklin had it all figured out. After a stellar career as a Tiger, he would leave LSU in 1981 for a dozen years in the NBA, retire rich, and then live happily after.

But life got in the way.

His hoops career was ended by a condition that made him cramp so badly he couldn’t move. Along the way was a fracture in his back, an unsuccessful business venture, and then, last May, prostate cancer followed by a failed gall bladder.

“I had to go through so much to get to where I am now,” Macklin says. “I guess it was a divine cleansing, all the ups and downs I had to go through, learning to start over again. Going back to school, getting certified in certain things.”

Now Macklin is the director of the Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness & Sports with the task of promoting health and activity in Louisiana in various ways, helping schools, staging statewide competitions called the Governor’s Games and offering education and research.

But it’s another part of his job that seems to really get Macklin charged up, as director of the Bureau of Minority Health Access, a campaign supported from a federal grant called “Own Your Own Health” and its website, livingwellinlouisiana.org

“Obesity is a huge problem,” Macklin says. “Minorities disproportionately suffer high rates from all your preventable diseases in this state, be it hypertension, heart disease, stroke, HIV/AIDs. It puts a burden on our healthcare system and eventually costs everyone.”Macklin does see progress, though, if slowly at times.

“For example, with obesity I’d like to move the needle,” Macklin says. “We’re 49th in the nation. But you cannot move the needle—and this is important—if you do not have minority populations involved in your health-promotions campaign. Because they’re the ones who have the highest rates of obesity. You can’t tailor it to a one-size-fits-all campaign.”

That’s why, Macklin says, he markets differently, for example, to African-Americans, Native Americans, Asians or Latinos and “what we call disadvantaged whites.”

The goal, he says, is to change behaviors while establishing trust and making Louisianans healthier. Which is a far cry from the basketball court, but somehow it all tied in, too.

“I had a plan mapped out,” he says with a laugh, “but evidently God had a different one.”