May 17, 2016

The 2016 annual meeting of the Society of General Internal Medicine included numerous awards for OHSU School of Medicine faculty members. Congratulations to the following awardees from the Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics:

Elizabeth Eckstrom, M.D., MPH, associate professor of medicine, was recognized as the Distinguished Professor of Geriatrics, a program SGIM has sponsored at its annual meeting since 2004. Invited professors are general internists and/or geriatricians with nationally-recognized expertise in education, research, and/or clinical care related to the care of older adults. The program facilitates career development of SGIM members in academic fields directly related to older patients in terms of education, research and clinical practice.

Martha Gerrity, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and physician, VA Portland Health Care System, received the Elnore M. Rhodes SGIM Service Award, symbolizing the highest level of service to the Society and honoring Ms. Rhodes' tremendous contributions to the Society of General Internal Medicine during her ten years as Executive Director. The award is given to an individual for outstanding service to SGIM and its mission of promoting patient care, research, education and community service in primary care internal medicine.

Reem Hasan, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine, received the Founder's Grant Award, which supports research by a junior investigator. Awardees are encouraged to consider using the SGIM Research Dataset Compendium for their proposed research projects. This resource provides information about a number of public use datasets and provides opportunities from investigators to get mentoring and one-time consultation from senior SGIM members.

Abigail Lenhart, M.D., assistant professor of medicine, received the Mary O'Flaherty Horn Scholars in General Internal Medicine Award, a three-year career development award for outstanding junior medical school faculty in general internal medicine. The Horn Scholars Program is intended to foster a new career track for physicians centering on successful balance of career, family and social responsibilities.

Three Milton W. Hamolsky Faculty Scientific Presentation Awards were given, two of which went to OHSU faculty members whose abstracts were judged to be the most outstanding among those submitted by junior faculty members of SGIM (in their first two years of a faculty appointment).

Sam Edwards, M.D., assistant professor of medicine and physician, VA Portland Health Care System, shared research on "Preventing Hospitalizations with Veterans Affairs Home-Based Primary Care: Which Patients Benefit Most?"

Meredith Niess, M.D., assistant professor of medicine, shared work on "Specialty Physicians and Medicaid: Problems beyond Reimbursement."

Pictured (left to right): Drs. Edwards, Gerrity, Eckstrom, Lenhart, Hasan and Niess during the SGIM 2016 conference.