Herbert W. Nickens Award

M. Roy Wilson, M.D.
University of Colorado Denver

The Herbert W. Nickens Award honors an individual who has made outstanding contributions to promoting justice in medical education and health care and is named for a former vice president of the AAMC.

M. Roy Wilson is a man of vision. His groundbreaking research on glaucoma and minorities has preserved eyesight for countless individuals. His foresight in establishing new initiatives and programs has helped institutionalize diversity as a core value in academic medicine. And his passion for justice in medical care has kept the public eye sharply focused on the needs of medically underserved Americans.

It comes as no surprise, then, that this man of vision quickly ascended the ranks of academic medicine to become chancellor of the University of Colorado Denver and chairman of the board for the University of Colorado Hospital. He is also one of only 75 individuals in the world to be invited as a member of the international Glaucoma Research Society.

Dr. Wilson began his career in academic medicine as professor of ophthalmology at the University of California at Los Angeles and at Charles R. Drew University School of Medicine and Science. After 12 years at King/Drew Medical Center, where he also became chief of ophthalmology and medical school dean, he was appointed dean of the Creighton University School of Medicine and served as both dean and vice president for health sciences from 1999 to 2003. Dr. Wilson's career then took him to Lubbock, Texas, where he was appointed president of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC).

In each role, Dr. Wilson put into place new administrative structures, programs, and policies supporting diversity in the medical and health professions. Shortly after establishing the first Health Sciences Office of Multicultural and Community Affairs at Creighton, the number of underrepresented minority faculty and underrepresented minority students at the medical school both increased substantially. When he assumed the presidency of TTUHSC, he made diversity a key part of his "Lighting the Path" inauguration symposium and later implemented a holistic admissions policy that doubled matriculation of first-year underrepresented minority students.

Additionally, when the future of preexisting diversity initiatives hung in the balance, Dr. Wilson put his remarkable administrative skills to work to revive them. In 1986, barely five months into his role as chief ophthalmologist at King/Drew, Dr. Wilson not only rescued the ophthalmology residency program (which was on probation), he transformed it into a nationally recognized academic department. Similarly, at Creighton, he restored the vision behind two pipeline programs vital to encouraging future minority physicians and biomedical researchers: a federal Health Careers Opportunity Program and a local mentoring program for underrepresented high school students interested in clinical and basic sciences.

Keenly aware of the vital connection between campus and community, Dr. Wilson has been actively involved in local efforts to improve minority health. While at TTUHSC, he launched a local awareness campaign to prevent obesity in predominantly Hispanic children that is now a Lubbock-wide effort to make the city "the healthiest" in Texas. Additionally, his vision of a medical school in El Paso that not only provides service to the underserved Hispanic community, but leads the way in researching health care disparity issues, will soon be realized as plans for a new medical school there unfold.

At the national level, Dr. Wilson is a founding member of the Foundation of the American Academy of Ophthalmology's EyeCareAmerica campaign to encourage regular eye exams by African Americans and Latinos to prevent glaucoma, and is chair of the strategic plan subcommittee of the advisory council of the National Institutes of Health National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Additionally, Dr. Wilson serves on the executive steering committee of what many believe is the most important glaucoma study ever conducted, the Ocular Hypertension Treatment Study.

Dr. Wilson received his B.S. degree from Allegheny College, his M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and his M.S. in Epidemiology from the University of California at Los Angeles School of Public Health. Following his internship in internal medicine at New York City's Harlem Hospital Center, Dr. Wilson completed residency training in ophthalmology and a glaucoma fellowship at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Harvard Medical School. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2003, and two years later became the first African American to be inducted into the American Ophthalmology Society.

Find out more about the Herbert W. Nickens Award, nominate a deserving individual, and view a list of previous award recipients.