Lemak Health, founded by world renown orthopedic surgeon D. Larry Lemak, is a leader in the orthopedic and sports medicine field and is a proud sponsor of the Alabama Football Coaches Association. Dr. Lemak has served thousands of patients of Alabama and their families for over forty years.
Dr. Lemak is an esteemed graduate of The University of Alabama Medical School and he completed his residency at The University of Pittsburgh. He is a member of the American Academy of Orthopeadic Surgeons (AAOS), the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine (AOSSM) and the Arthroscopy Association of North America (AANA).
He has served as medical advisor to the NFL’s European League as well as Major League Soccer for 17 years.
Dr. Lemak has long been a supporter of youth and high school athletes. He is one of the country’s leading experts on orthopedic medicine, particularly in surgery of the shoulder and knee. He sits on the advisory board of Pop Warner football and the Alabama High School Athletic Association. Dr. Lemak also serves as team physician for many high schools and colleges throughout Alabama. As founder of Lemak Sports Medicine, he pioneered a program providing free medical coverage and certified athletic trainers for 20 Birmingham area schools. Dr. Lemak was also involved in the founding of the National Center for Sports Safety, which was created to educate the youth sports community, making the field of play safer for our youth athletes.
“I have always been interested in the sports and the athletes,” Dr. Lemak said. “Early in my career before sports medicine was popular, we starting looking after the high school athletes and we started physician and trainer coverage. No one was doing that back then.”
Dr. Lemak believes that the future of sports medicine is really in the education of the coaches from youth sports on up. ” The coaches are always there at the practices looking out after the players,” he said. “You don’t always have a trainer there. If there is an emergency, those in charge will always default to their level of education.” Dr. Lemak said that was the reason that he started the National Center for Sports Safety. “We must never become complacent when it comes to the care of the athlete,” he said.
Dr. Lemak receives award from ALFCA President Terry Curtis for his service to football teams across the state at last year’s ALFCA Convention.
He is a member of the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame as well as being inducted into the Alabama High School Hall of Fame in 2010, something he considers a great honor. ” I have spent much of my time there, in the high schools, and have served on the medical board for many years,” he said. “The fact that I was the first physician to be inducted was very special to me.”
In addition, he was a founder of the American Sports Medicine Institute (ASMI), a research and education institute for sports medicine, which has produced volumes of research for sports medicine and has educated over 250 orthopedic surgeons and family practitioners in the specialty of sports medicine.
Dr. Lemak has been married to his wife Georgine for 48 years and they have three children—John, David, and Matthew and seven grandchildren who all reside in Birmingham.
The practice of Dr. Lemak has always been patient oriented. He proved that a decade or so ago by taking his practice from the big hospital to the local communities, where he believed that the patients wanted to be served. Today Lemak Health has seven different locations where patients come for their orthopedic needs. The goal of Dr. Larry Lemak and Lemak Health remains to help the patient through their injury and make it as painless as possible.
The Alabama Football Coaches Association appreciates Dr. Lemak’s contribution to high school athletics in our state and is proud to have him as a long time and very valuable sponsor of our organization.