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Embargoed for Release 7:00 p.m., EST, Oct. 23, 1999

AAMC Honors Leaders in Academic Medicine

Washington, D.C., October 23, 1999 -- -- The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) recognized the distinguished careers of three individual leaders in medical education and science with national honors presented at the AAMC's 110th annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Joseph B. Martin, M.D., Ph.D., dean at Harvard Medical School, is this year's recipient of the Abraham Flexner Award for Distinguished Service to Medical Education. The Association established the award in 1958 to recognize extraordinary individual contributions to medical schools and to the medical education community as a whole.

For over 40 years, Dr. Martin has built an international reputation both as a visionary researcher in the field of neurological sciences and as an outstanding leader in academic medicine and medical education. Prior to joining Harvard, Dr. Martin served as dean of the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and as chancellor of UCSF from 1993-1997. During his tenure as dean, he solidified the position of UCSF as one of the premier, public, biomedical research institutions in the United States. Colleagues at both UCSF and Harvard 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.

Since his appointment as dean at Harvard in 1997, 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. Among the 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 Harvard-led National Center for Excellence in Women's Health.

While at UCSF, Dean Martin 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 laid the groundwork for UCSF's Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Dr. Martin received his medical degree from the University of Alberta, Canada. He completed his residency in neurology at Case Western Reserve University Hospital. Dr. Martin's 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.

William N. Kelley, M.D., CEO of the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center and Health System and Dean of the School of Medicine, is the 1999 recipient of the David E. Rogers Award. This award is jointly sponsored by the AAMC and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and honors David E. Rogers, M.D., a former president of the Foundation and an exemplar of academic medicine's commitment to meeting the health needs of our nation. The award recognizes a medical school faculty member who has made major contributions to improving the health and health care of the American people.

At the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Kelley has led the development of one of the first academic, fully integrated, delivery systems in the nation. He 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 implementing the program. This new system of health care employs evidence-based practices that form the basis of a clinical integration strategy across the full continuum of care, unites the community with the academic medical center and eliminates the need for strict primary care gatekeeping.

Dr. Kelley also holds a patent in a frequently used gene transfer technique that has allowed for numerous advances in the application of gene therapy.

Dr. Kelley received his medical degree from Emory University School of Medicine and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. After a fellowship with NIH and a teaching fellowship at Harvard Medical School, he began his academic career as an assistant professor of Medicine at Duke University School of Medicine, moving on to head Duke's Division of Rheumatic and Genetic Diseases, before becoming chair of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Elizabeth H. Blackburn, M.D., professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California, San Francisco, is the recipient of the 1999 Baxter Award for Distinguished Research in the Biomedical Sciences. This award recognizes outstanding clinical or laboratory research conducted by a medical school faculty member. The Baxter Award was established in 1981 and is funded by the Baxter Foundation.

Dr. Blackburn's discoveries in understanding the unique properties of chromosomal ends, called telomeres, have created an entirely new field in molecular biology offering outstanding opportunities for the future study of disease and aging. 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, yielding a rich new avenue of exploration for cancer therapeutics.

Dr. Blackburn received the rare double honor of being elected to both the British Royal Society and the American National Academy of Sciences. She is a past president of the American Society for Cell Biology, 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.

Dr. Blackburn received her medical degree from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and her Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Cambridge, England.

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The Association of American Medical Colleges represents the 125 accredited U.S. medical schools; the 16 accredited Canadian medical schools; some 400 major teaching hospitals, including 74 Veterans Administration medical centers; 91 academic and professional societies representing nearly 88,000 faculty members; and the nation's 67,000 medical students and 102,000 residents.

Additional information about the AAMC and U.S. medical schools and teaching hospitals available at www.aamc.org/newsroom.