WASHINGTON, D.C., November 5, 2005 - Melissa A. Warfield, M.D., professor emeritus of pediatrics at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS), has received the AAMC's (Association of American Medical Colleges) annual Humanism in Medicine Award. The award, sponsored by the Pfizer Medical Humanities Initiative, honors a medical school faculty physician who is a mentor to medical students and a practitioner of patient-centered care.

Dr. Warfield has made a lasting impression on her grateful students, residents, colleagues, and patients. She once forfeited her own paycheck during a hospital budget crisis, and paid her patients' pharmacy bills when they could not afford their prescriptions. For years she served as the state of Virginia's sole pediatric hematologist who regularly drove for several hours at a time to teach pediatric residents outside the Hampton Roads area.

Dr. Warfield has spent more than three decades teaching EVMS students as well as many years training EVMS residents at Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters, where she served as director of pediatric hematology/oncology and director of the pediatric residency program. As a teacher, she emphasized that residents should be "humanists first, and physicians second." Students and colleagues credit her directness with patients, her unrelenting compassion, and her dry wit for creating a trusting, honest and fun atmosphere for patients and families. One former student called her "a pediatrician's pediatrician."

As the physician who diagnosed the first case of lead poisoning in Norfolk decades ago, Dr. Warfield worked with the local health department to establish the Lead Poison Prevention Project. She is also credited with the development of several other community health initiatives, including the Tidewater Regional Sickle Cell Anemia Program and the child protection services program at Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters to identify, treat, and prevent child abuse.

In the latter half of her career, Dr. Warfield became keenly interested in bioethics and trained as a bioethics fellow at the University of Virginia's Center for Biomedical Ethics. She then co-initiated a bioethics program for first year medical students at EVMS and established an ethics committee at Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters.

Dr. Warfield received her undergraduate degree in chemistry from the College of William and Mary, and her medical degree from the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania (now Drexel University College of Medicine). She completed an internship at what is now Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, a residency in pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, and a fellowship in pediatric hematology at the Children's Hospital of Michigan.

The Pfizer Medical Humanities Initiative is a research and educational program committed to understanding and strengthening the patient-physician relationship. It is a program of Pfizer Inc., the research-based global pharmaceutical company, www.positiveprofiles.com.

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The Association of American Medical Colleges is a not-for-profit association representing all 129 accredited U.S. and 17 accredited Canadian medical schools; nearly 400 major teaching hospitals and health systems, including 68 Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers; and 94 academic and scientific societies. Through these institutions and organizations, the AAMC represents 109,000 faculty members, 67,000 medical students, and 104,000 resident physicians. Additional information about the AAMC and U.S. medical schools and teaching hospitals is available at www.aamc.org/newsroom.

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