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The Annual Awards of the Association of American Medical Colleges

2000; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 75; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1097/00001888-200002000-00026

1938-808X

Health and Medical Research Impacts

Abraham Flexner Award for Distinguished Service to Medical Education The Abraham Flexner Award for Distinguished Service to Medical Education was established in 1958 by the Association to recognized extraordinary individual contributions to medical schools and to the medical education community as a whole. Joseph Boyd Martin, MD, PhD Dean, Harvard Medical School Joseph B. Martin has built an international reputation both as a visionary researcher in the field of neurologic sciences and as an outstanding leader in academic medicine and medical education. His colleagues laud him as the ultimate physician—scientist, a healer and teacher who has never let his vast range of commitments as a dean and administrator keep him from a continued presence on the wards as an educator and mentor.JOSEPH BOYD MARTIN, MD, PHDSince 1997, Dr. Martin has served as the dean of Harvard Medical School. He arrived at Harvard during a time of great strain in the relationships between Harvard's 17 affiliated hospitals and between the hospitals and the medical school. Through what Harvard President Neil Rudenstine terms “absolute integrity, wisdom, and practical skill,” Dr. Martin has succeeded in healing many institutional rifts, initiating new research across a variety of units, and promoting a genuinely common effort to address systematic problems. Collaborations that have been initiated or are planned under his leadership include the Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, the Harvard Clinical Research Initiative, and the development of a National Center for Excellence in Women's Health, which was awarded to a consortium led by Harvard. Prior to joining Harvard, Dr. Martin served as dean of the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, for eight years, and as chancellor of UCSF from 1993 to 1997. During his tenure as dean, he solidified the position of UCSF as one of the premier public biomedical research institutions in the United States. He established the W. M. Keck Foundation for Integrative Neurosciences, dedicated to combining studies of the brain and behavior, and the Gladstone Institute for Virology and Immunology, dedicated to AIDS research. He also began laying the groundwork for UCSF's Comprehensive Cancer Center. Colleagues at both UCSF and Harvard also praise Dr. Martin for his passionate commitment to crucial issues such as the need for comprehensive changes in clinical research training and the importance of diversity among medical students, residents, and faculty. Dr. Martin's 40-year career spans a variety of roles and venues within academic medicine, including professorships at the University of Connecticut, McGill University, and Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital. He served as chairman of the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill, and as chief of the Neurology Service at Mass General. During the past decade, in addition to a wide array of publications on subjects in the neurosciences, Dr. Martin has published on a variety of topics in medical education and academic medicine, including a number of articles on how academic medical centers can survive and maintain their excellence in today's changing health care delivery system. After receiving his MD from the University of Alberta, Canada, Faculty of Medicine, Dr. Martin completed his residency in Neurology at Case Western Reserve University Hospital. His scholarly publications include more than 20 books and over 200 peer-reviewed original articles. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Institute of Medicine, and a past president of the American Neurological Association. David E. Rogers Award The David E. Rogers Award, jointly sponsored by the AAMC and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is presented this year for the fifth time. The award honors David E. Rogers, MD, a former president of the RWJ Foundation and an examplar of academic medicine's commitment to meeting the health needs of our country. In honor of Dr. Rogers' efforts, the Rogers Award recognizes a medical school faculty member who has made major contributions to improving the health and health care of the American people. William N. Kelley, MD Chief executive officer, University of Pennsylvania Health System, and dean, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine Much of the shape and direction of today's academic medical centers can be traced to the influence of William N. Kelley, MD. As CEO of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and dean of the school of medicine, Dr. Kelley has led the development of one of the first academic, fully integrated delivery systems in the nation, building and promoting a model for strengthening the future of academic medicine. Many other institutions around the country have since built large and successful clinical enterprises, closely based on Dr. Kelley's model, demonstrating that even in these difficult times academic medical centers can remain true to their education and research missions while still remaining competitive in the delivery of high-quality care.WILLIAM N. KELLEY, MDThe integrated delivery system is only one aspect of Dr. Kelley's vision for the future of academic medicine. He has also built and implemented the largest health and disease management program in the country, with over 500 physicians and staff and 60 separate clinical sites engaged in carrying out the program. This visionary new system of health care creates evidence-based best practices that form the basis of a clinical integration strategy across the full continuum of care, uniting the community with the academic medical center and eliminating the need for strict primary care gatekeeping. Under Dr. Kelley's leadership, Penn's new research space has more than doubled, and the institution has climbed to third in the country in NIH funding rankings from its position of tenth on his arrival. He has also initiated and supervised Curriculum 2000, a major revision of the medical school curriculum that integrates clinical experiences with lectures early in the educational experience. This groundbreaking new curriculum, like so many of Dr. Kelley's innovations, is now serving as a model for others around the country. Dr. Kelley received his MD from the Emory University School of Medicine and completed his residency in internal medicine at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. In 1968, after a fellowship at the NIH and a teaching fellowship at Harvard Medical School, he began his academic career as an assistant professor of medicine at Duke. Within a few years he rose to head the Division of Rheumatic and Genetic Diseases, before moving on to become chair of the Department of Internal Medicine at Michigan. During his nearly 15-year tenure at Michigan, Dr. Kelley built one of the finest departments of medicine in the country. He joined the University of Pennsylvania in 1989, and since that time has served as the CEO of the health system, dean of the school of medicine, and executive VP of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Kelley has over 250 peer-reviewed publications and 19 books to his credit, and has served on numerous editorial boards and scientific committees. He currently serves on the boards of directors of Merck and Co., Inc., Beckman Coulter Inc., and Emory University, among others. Dr. Kelley also holds a patent on a frequently used genetransfer technique that has made possible numerous advancements in gene therapy applications. Humanism in Medical Education Award The Humanism in Medical Education Award, sponsored by Pfizer, Inc., annually honors a medical school faculty physician who is a caring and compassionate mentor and a practitioner of patient-centered care, who teaches ethics, empathy, and service by example. Andrew Hsi, MD, MPH Associate professor of pediatrics and clinical education, University of New Mexico School of Medicine Dr. Andrew Hsi's academic activities and accomplishments are myriad. He directs the Newborn Nursery at the University of New Mexico's University Hospital, as well as the Division of General Pediatrics. He lectures worldwide on maternal substance abuse and subsequent health effects on neonates, and co-chairs the university and county Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect. But perhaps his most important work stems from the Los Pasos (Steps) program, which he designed to provide a multidisciplinary approach to mothers and children living with substance abuse, crime, violence, and neglect.ANDREW HSI, MD, MPHHe has also helped to design the Milagro (Miracle) program, which serves drug-addicted pregnant women. “This remarkable man has patience rarely demonstrated by the public when it comes to issues regarding pregnant women who abuse drugs,” wrote the residents who nominated Dr. Hsi. “His fairness, sensitivity, and nonjudgmental attitude have enabled him to work with this most demonized of patient populations.” “There are no ‘crack babies,’” Dr. Hsi tells his students. To Dr. Hsi, the term is a label, and like any other stereotype, it prevents medical professionals from being objective. Dr. Hsi teaches, and models, an approach to the patient in which that individual's humanity is always uppermost in the physician's mind. Since 1990, he and the Los Pasos team have been rewarded for this compassionate approach with over 1,300 healthier babies and healthier mothers, and one recovered mother has joined the Los Pasos team as a patient advocate. Dr. Hsi, like many other medical school faculty members, serves as a mentor and advisor for many students. He is not assigned to them in an official capacity, however; students seek him out, having heard of his honesty and compassion. One of Dr. Hsi's former students, hearing of his possible nomination for the Humanism award, wrote, “Not only do I take my daughter to him for health care, I often seek his advice on career choices, parenting challenges, case management, and ethical dilemmas. I feel that he embodies what we are striving to become: humanistic physicians.” Dr. Hsi's nomination also stated, “It is the true test of a humanist to be humable in the face of overwhelming success. Dr. Hsi will not rest on the merits of his success—he will always have another patient to help, another student to educate, another public policy battle to fight, another mother who needs an advocate.” Award for Distinguished Research in the Biomedical Sciences The AAMC Award for Distinguished Research in the Biomedical Sciences was established in 1981 and is funded by the Baxter Allegiance Foundation. The award recognizes outstanding clinical or laboratory research conducted by a member of the faculty of a medical school that is an AAMC member. Elizabeth Helen Blackburn, MD Professor and chair, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine Elizabeth Helen Blackburn, MD, is lauded by many colleagues as one of the nation's—indeed, the world's—most distinguished scientists in the biological disciplines. Scientists had made little progress in understanding the unique properties of chromosomal ends, called telomeres, until Dr. Blackburn began her brilliant work in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Her discoveries have created an entirely new field in molecular biology—the molecular description of telomeres—offering outstanding implications for the study of disease and aging.ELIZABETH HELEN BLACKBURN, MDFrom her original, tour-de-force identification of the DNA sequence of telomeres—at a time when DNA sequencing and cloning technologies were far from fully developed—Dr. Blackburn moved on to establish the structures of telomeres and the properties of telomerase, the enzyme that manufactures them. Her fundamental work has made possible an entirely new understanding of how the life span of normal cells is regulated and of how that regulation goes astray in cancer cells, offering a rich new avenue of exploration for cancer therapies. “It is rare in this day and age that a single individual can lay claim to findings of such wide ranging and deep importance,” writes Haile T. Debas, MD, dean and chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. Dr. Blackburn received her MD from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and her PhD in molecular biology from the University of Cambridge, England. Following postdoctoral work with Dr. Joseph Gall at Yale University, where she began her seminal work on telomeres, Dr. Blackburn moved to the University of California system, where she has spent over 20 years as a faculty member and department chair in molecular biology, microbiology, and immunology. Dr. Blackburn has received the rare double honor of being elected to both the British Royal Society and the American National Academy of Sciences. She was elected president of the American Society for Cell Biology in 1998, and has received a host of other accolades, including the 1999 California Scientist of the Year Award, the Rosenstiel Award and Passano Award for 1999, and le Grand Priz Charles-Leopold Mayer Award in 1998. Outstanding Community Service Award The Outstanding Community Service Award was established in 1993 to spotlight a member institution with a longstanding, major institutional commitment to addressing community needs. The award recognizes exceptional programs that go well beyond the traditional role of academic medicine and reach communities whose needs are not being met through the traditional health delivery system. Morehouse School of Medicine Atlanta, Georgia For some institutions, community service represents one aspect of what they do. For Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM), community service is what they do, and it represents the institution's central purpose. The mission of MSM is to recruit and train minority and other students as physicians, biomedical scientists, and public health practitioners committed to meeting the primary health care needs of the underserved. “Community service at Morehouse is not a peripheral function: it is central to the pursuit of our mission,” writes E. Nigel Harris, MD, dean and senior VP for academic affairs. Although institutional resources are scarce for Morehouse, the nation's smallest medical school (with an average class size of about 40) and one of its newest, the school has nonetheless built programs of teaching, research, and service that reach over 25,000 disadvantaged Georgians each year. Morehouse's community service philosophy is based on empowerment and partnership. Nearly ten years ago, the school pioneered and published Community Organization and Development for Health Promotion, which described a process for establishing a community coalition that develops and implements health promotion interventions in collaboration with the medical school. Morehouse has helped to build over 40 successful community coalitions in Georgia using this method, which empowers the community coalition to mount projects and work for change after the medical school has withdrawn. First-year students get an early dose of community service through MSM's community health course, required of all first-years and unique in medical education. Students learn first-hand how to analyze the health problems of a defined community, working in small groups with Georgia State nursing students and Clark Atlanta social work students to identify health problems in inner-city Atlanta neighborhoods. A focus on community service can also be found in family medicine and in pediatrics. A required eight-week family medicine/maternal child health clerkship not only introduces the student to clinical issues, but also involves the student in community outreach, requiring each student to design a program to address a community problem such as drug abuse or poor diet. The pediatrics clerkship upholds the same principles, assigning each student to work with a community agency. Ambulatory clinics are located in underserved areas. ▪ Morehouse has recently added a Prevention Research Center, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to its community service portfolio. The center focuses on a group of nine low-income, predominantly African American neighborhoods, and is guided by a community coalition board run primarily by community residents. The center's first project will develop and test an intervention to prevent the spread of HIV infection and other STDs among women, and will eventually reach about 400 women. ▪ Over the past nine years, at least half a dozen community-based cancer prevention and control projects have investigated approaches to increasing the number of inner-city and rural African American women who receive mammography and Pap tests, while another major project has explored ways to heighten cancer awareness among African Americans. These efforts have led to hundreds of women's receiving mammography and Pap tests, while others have quit smoking and improved their eating habits. ▪ The Community-Based Teaching Health Department, conducted in partnership with the Fulton County Health Department, seeks to create an effective affiliation between the medical school and the health department. Teaching activities include practicum opportunities for preventive medicine and MPH students as well as elective opportunities. The project has also sponsored two research projects, an assessment of environmental factors impacting health in neighborhoods served by the Prevention Research Center, and a test of an intervention to prevent STDs and AIDS in a public housing project near the Morehouse campus. ▪ Project Right Choices, a joint effort of Morehouse and the Clay County Improvement Association (a community coalition established with HPRC assistance), gives 100 fourth-through-sixth graders a place to go on weekends and when school lets out. The program focuses on pregnancy prevention through abstinence, focusing on issues of self-esteem and anger management. In Atlanta, a mentoring program for teen parents seeks to prevent second pregnancies, while the Three-Tier Peer Program offers an intervention at a middle school directed at reducing both teen pregnancies and STDs. Morehouse also runs teen clinics—one in a health department facility and another in a children's hospital—which offer comprehensive adolescent health care, counseling, and contraceptive services. ▪ Other Morehouse initiatives include a gerontology center, which provides technical assistance in establishing support services in senior-citizen high-rise housing as well as educational offerings for seniors; medical back-up for a clinic for homeless women and children; and a cardiology outreach program that provides educational sessions on heart disease prevention to community groups. In addition, Morehouse's Partnerships for Health Professions Education program fulfills the school's commitment to enlarge the pool of minority applicants to medical and other health professions schools through an array of minority recruitment and retention projects beginning in elementary school and continuing throughout the educational continuum. Award committee reviewer Dennis Brimhall, president of University Hospital of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, sums up Morehouse's approach: “Having community services at the core of an institution's mission makes a difference. It permeates all they do… as a core mission, up front and from the start, it is real.” Alpha Omega Alpha Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher Awards The Alpha Omega Alpha Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher Awards were initiated by the AOA in 1988 to provide national recognition to faculty members who have distinguished themselves in medical students' education. Susan Billings-Gagliardi, PhD Professor, cell biology, University of Massachusetts Medical School In her 25-year career at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, Dr. Susan Billings-Gagliardi has received the student-presented Outstanding Medical Educator Award 14 times, including every year since 1991. Hers is one of the strongest voices supporting undergraduate medical education at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where she has led an ongoing review and revision of the undergraduate curriculum. Dr. Billings-Gagliardi strongly advocates an approach to medical studies that encourages students to interconnect basic, clinical, and social sciences from their first day in medical school. This approach has won the praise of colleagues and students alike.SUSAN BILLINGS-GAGLIARDI, PHDAmong Dr. Billings-Gagliardi's innovative contributions to education is her promotion of stroke prevention. She has led the school's development of an interdisciplinary mini-curriculum known as SPRINT (Stroke Prevention, Recognition, Intervention, and Treatment), which is embedded within the first-year neuroscience course, Mind, Brain, and Behavior I. This curriculum has been shown to produce significant gains in students' knowledge and skills about stroke and patient education, and an “activist” attitude toward stroke that is retained over the undergraduate years. Dr. Billings-Gagliardi and her collaborators at UMass are in the final stages of finalizing a partnership with the American Stroke Association to distribute SPRINT materials nationally, and to develop an interactive, multimedia Web site supporting them. One of the first basic science faculty members at UMass to publish her course notes online, Dr. Billings-Gagliardi has taken advantage of features unique to the computer to provide her students with such tools as a linked glossary of clinical terminology written specifically for first-year students, animated wiring diagrams, and interactive study questions for which students submit answers online and receive feedback. A researcher as well as an educational innovator, Dr. Billings-Gagliardi specializes in the study of development of central nervous system myelin. She and her colleagues have been awarded more than $2.5 million in grant support for this work, including a Javits Award for Neuroscience Research. She is also involved in a study of students' communication of basic science to patients, hoping to learn what potential patients consider to be effective and “useful” ways to convey such information. Dr. Billings-Gagliardi received her PhD in Medical Science from Harvard University, and did postdoctoral work at the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke. She has spent her entire academic career at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, rising from assistant professor of Anatomy to her current role as professor and vice chair in the Department of Cell Biology. In addition to student-initiated honors, Dr. Billings-Gagliardi has received the American Medical Women's Association's Gender Equity Award, and the UMMS faculty's Lamar Soutter Award, which recognizes longstanding leadership and excellence in education. L. D. Britt, MD Brickhouse Professor and chairman, Department of Surgery, Eastern Virginia Medical School Graduating classes at Eastern Virginia Medical School have bestowed on Dr. L. D. Britt the coveted Sir William Osler Award for Outstanding Teaching as an Attending Physician no fewer than eight times—a school record. This singular honor is just one measure of Dr. Britt's outstanding contributions to medical education. He has also been honored by EVMS faculty with the Dean's Faculty Achievement Award for Teaching in the Clinical Sciences, and with the dean's highest honor, the Outstanding Faculty Award for excellence in teaching, research, and service. Dr. Britt was also selected from among over 15,000 faculty members to receive the Outstanding Faculty Award from the Virginia State Council of Higher Education, presented by the governor.L. D. BRITT, MDThese accolades are understandable in light of Dr. Britt's achievements in advancing medical education at EVMS. Under his leadership, the Department of Surgery was the first at the medical school to use standardized patients, an innovation that led to the Huma Award for Educational Innovation for Undergraduate Medical Education from the Virginia Surgical Society in 1997. Dr. Britt created undergraduate “bullet sessions,” adopted department-wide, in which students are assigned a topic to research and then present in under three minutes each day during the surgical clerkship. He also created the “academic village” concept for his department, in which every function is directly related to its educational mission and faculty are held accountable for teaching excellence. The Residents as Medical Student Educators program in the Department of Surgery, which Dr. Britt promoted, has helped EVMS surgical residents to win the Osler Award for Outstanding Teaching as a Resident from the graduating medical student class ten times over the past 13 years. Dr. Britt's contributions to education span the national as well as the local level. As president of the Society of Black Academic Surgeons, he is leading a national effort to promote surgical interest among underrepresented minority medical students. He was selected as president of the Committee on Surgery Education of the American College of Surgeons, and has received the Dr. Manuel Leichenstein Memorial Award—an honor given to a great surgeon/lecturer of modern times—from the National Center of Advanced Medical Education. Locally, he seeks novel ways to mentor first- and second-year students through an early surgical experiences program, which allows students to witness a specific surgical case and then discuss its underlying basic science principles. Each year, Dr. Britt takes time from his busy schedule to mentor 20 to 30 undergraduate medical students. Dr. Britt received his MD and MPH from Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed his residency at University Hospital, Cook County Hospital, and Westside Veterans Hospital of the University of Illinois School of Medicine. After appointments at the University of Illinois and the University of Maryland, he joined the faculty of EVMS in 1986. Patrick Duff, MD Professor of obstetrics and gynecology, University of Florida College of Medicine Dr. Patrick Duff has accumulated a host of honors for excellence in teaching over the course of his academic career, which spans over 30 years with the U.S. Army's graduate medical education program and with the University of Florida College of Medicine. While at the University of Florida, Dr. Duff has twice received the Outstanding Clinical Science Instructor Award from one of the graduating classes, and has twice received the Medical Science Teacher Award from the entire student body. In 1991 and 1999, he received the highest teaching award given by the College of Medicine: the Hippocratic Award. And in 1995, he was recognized by the University as the Teacher—Scholar of the year, a university-wide award that had only twice before been presented to a faculty member of the college of medicine.PATRICK DUFF, MDWhile the director of student education at Madigan Army Medical Center from 1984 to 1989, Dr. Duff received similar praise from students and faculty alike. In this role, he was a member of the clinical faculty in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Washington. Although only one third of UW medical students rotate through Madigan, Dr. Duff was selected for four consecutive years as the Distinguished Clinical Science Teacher. This singular achievement won him the designation of Teacher Superior in Perpetuity from the university, a distinction that had been awarded only seven times from 1949 to 1989. Among Dr. Duff's popular courses are a problem-based seminar during the freshman anatomy course, the sophomore microbiology course, five problem-based seminars for third-year medical students, and an elective in high-risk obstetrics for senior students. As a program developer, author, and editor, Dr. Duff's contributions to medical education in obstetrics and gynecology are manifold. His orientation program for new residents in obstetrics and gynecology is now used as a model for many academic departments across the country, and received the first-prize award for scientific presentation at the 1994 meeting of the Association of Professors of Gynecology and Obstetrics (APGO). He coauthored and edited the sixth edition of Educational Objectives: Core Curriculum in Obstetrics and Gynecology, used by all obstetrics and gynecology residency programs to develop their curricula. His latest achievement is a new CD-ROM self-instructional program that teaches medical students about infectious diseases in obstetrics and gynecology, which was distributed this summer to all departments of obstetrics and gynecology affiliated with medical schools. Dr. Duff received his MD from Georgetown University School of Medicine, and completed his residency in obstetrics and gynecology at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He began his academic career as the chief of family planning and outpatient services and director of the intern and student education program in Walter Reed's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. John T. Hansen, PhD Professor of neurobiology and anatomy and associate dean for admissions, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry Dr. Michael Hansen's 25-year career in academic medicine has been punctuated by a wide array of teaching awards, presented by faculty, administrators, and students alike. At the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, where he directs Human Structure, the largest basic science course in the curriculum, he has been selected as Faculty and Medical Student Commencement Marshal for the past eight years. Former students have recognized his integrity and inspired teaching with the Medical Alumni Association's Gold Medal Award, its highest honor. In addition, he has been honored 13 times with teaching awards given by first-year medical students.JOHN T. HANSEN, PHDDr. Hansen's fundamental commitment to medical education shines through all he does. While a faculty member at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, he taught gross anatomy while simultaneously holding a Research Career Development Award from the NIH. Similarly, while chair of the anatomy department at Rochester, he was 70% funded by extramural research grants, yet still devoted time to directing the Human Structure course, as well as two fourth-year electives. Dr. Hansen serves on every education committee of importance at Rochester's medical center; currently, he is a member of the steering committee charged with designing Rochester's new Double Helix curriculum. Dr. Hansen is also a leader in exploring new avenues in teaching and curricula. He was the first Rochester faculty member to use case-based exercises and problem-based learning cases. He has led workshops in tutor training and has published over 90 peer-reviewed papers, reviews, and book chapters. One of Dr. Hansen's most recent publications is the Essential Anatomy Dissector, published in 1998 by Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins. Dr. Hansen received his PhD in Anatomy from Tulane University, and did postgraduate work at Harvard Medical School, the University of Iowa College of Medicine, and the University of California School of Medicine. After beginning his academic career as an instructor in anatomy at Tulane, he spent ten years on the faculty of the University of Texas Health Sciences Center before moving to Rochester in 1985.