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2009 Abraham Flexner Award for Distinguished Service to Medical
Education
Arthur H. Rubenstein, M.B.B.Ch.
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Nearly 50 years after publication of the Flexner Report, a young
physician educated in South Africa began his career in U.S. academic
medicine. Now with the Flexner centennial fast approaching, that
young physician has become his generation's "most influential purveyor
of the Flexnerian method."
Arthur H. Rubenstein's academic medicine career has come to epitomize
what Abraham Flexner envisioned for the future of U.S. medical education,
with a greater emphasis on research as part of the medical education
experience, an integrated, institutional focus on learning, and
above all, a joy for the university environment and academic medicine
as a profession. From his first position stateside as a U.S. Public
Health Service Research fellow and assistant in medicine at the
University of Chicago, to his current role as dean and Robert G.
Dunlop Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School
of Medicine (Penn) and executive vice president of the University
of Pennsylvania for the Health System, Dr. Rubenstein, according
to his colleagues, is "the complete academic medicine physician
leader."
An internationally renowned endocrinologist, Dr. Rubenstein was
part of a team in 1979 that demonstrated how a genetic mutation
led to an abnormal form of insulin and, in turn, diabetes. But it
was his dogged pursuit of these findings at the clinical level and
new therapeutic interventions that elevate his efforts to a Flexnerian
level, said Michael S. Brown, M.D., former Penn board member and
currently director of the Jonsson Center for Molecular Genetics
at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
Similarly, Dr. Rubenstein has worked to create a translational
research infrastructure at Penn strengthened by many interdisciplinary
research institutes, including the Institute for Translational Medicine
and Therapeutics. The latter, said Dr. Brown, has "redefined" the
model of translational research as a distinct academic discipline
"in the American medical center" and is said to have been a major
reason why the school received a National Institutes of Health Clinical
and Translational Science Award in 2006. Translational research
at Penn is benefiting patients in the newly opened Perelman Center
for Advanced Medicine and will be further enhanced with the 2010
opening of the contiguous Fisher Center for Translational Research.
"Improving medical education is a recurrent theme at
academic medical centers, and we should never feel satisfied that
we have reached the highest level."
- Arthur H. Rubenstein, M.B.B.Ch. |
Dr. Rubenstein has brought this same degree of commitment to his
role as an administrator, first as chair of the department of medicine
at the University of Chicago, then as dean of Mount Sinai School
of Medicine, and today in his stewardship of the Penn medical school
and health system. There, together with Ralph Muller, CEO of Penn's
Health System, he transformed the flow of funds into a process that
is now well-defined, transparent, and equitable for each of the
clinical departments. By ensuring that "academic clinical preeminence"
continues to "take precedence over issues of financial return and
clinical empire building," said Dr. Brown, Dr. Rubenstein has created
a powerful model emulated by other institutions nationwide. Not
surprisingly, the same devotion to teaching and mentorship has led
colleagues to refer to him as "the mentor of American medicine."
Further, Dr. Rubenstein's "record as a developer of talent is among
the very best in modern medical history."
His exuberance for and unwavering commitment to academia and medical
education are best expressed by Dr. Rubenstein himself, who once
told the Pennsylvania Gazetteer, "I love universities. I love academic
medicine."
Dr. Rubenstein received his M.B.B.Ch. degree from the University
of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
About the Abraham Flexner Award for Distinguished Service to Medical
Education
The Abraham Flexner Award for Distinguished Service to Medical
Education was established by the AAMC in 1958 to recognize extraordinary
individual contributions to medical schools and to the medical education
community as a whole.
Find out more about the Abraham Flexner
Award for Distinguished Service to Medical Education.
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