Our History

William Greene Raoul was born in Louisiana in 1842 and moved to Atlanta in 1870. His career had been in railcar manufacturing, but he subsequently rose to presidency of a number of railroads in the South. He has been credited with inventing the railroad airbrake, a significant advance. In 1907 he became involved with Associated Charities Organization (ACO) of Atlanta.  His daughter Rosine was ill with tuberculosis (and went on to die of it in 1918), and Mr Raoul was moved to promote interest in the understanding and care of patients with this disease.    Working with his daughter Rebecca, he started the first free dispensary for the treatment of tuberculosis as a branch of ACO; this constituted the beginnings of the anti-tuberculosis crusade in Georgia, and put Atlanta in the national spotlight with its work with African-Americans. At Mr Raoul’s death in 1913, his bequest of $50,000 established the Raoul Foundation, with the mission of carrying on his anti-tuberculosis work.   The Foundation was instrumental in establishing county health departments throughout Georgia, hiring public health nurses, gathering vital statistics, and promoting school, patient, and community health education programs.  It provided annual support to the Georgia Tuberculosis Association, which became the American Lung Association of Georgia.  In 1921, the Lung Association moved from patient care to the promotion of preventative health care and research. Over the past century the Foundation has continued to support the ALA of Georgia (which named a programming center in its headquarters after Mr Raoul in 1984), as well as many other organizations and programs throughout Georgia promoting prevention and education in lung disease.  With dramatic improvement in state and national control of tuberculosis beginning the 1950’s, the Foundation in the 1980’s widened its support to programs involved with other lung diseases, and in 2017 chose to devote its energies and grants to improve pediatric asthma education and management in Georgia.