Michael Shadid

Michael Abraham Shadid (Arabic: مايكل أبراهام شديد 1882 – August 13, 1966) was a Lebanese physician who founded the first medical cooperative in Elk City, Oklahoma, in 1931.

Shadid attended John Tarleton College in Stephenville, Texas, in 1902 and received a degree in medicine from Washington University in St. Louis in 1907.

He called a meeting of his farmer patients and proposed a cooperatively owned clinic and hospital in Elk City.

The Oklahoma Farmers' Union supported the measure and the hospital was opened by the Community Health Association, Inc., in August 1931.

[1] The American Medical Association (AMA) declared that his cooperative was unethical because it put laypersons in charge of business decisions.

[citation needed] Shadid traveled throughout the United States and Europe and gave speeches advocating for cooperative health care.