2026 Awardees
Each year, SAHM recognizes adolescent health professionals for their commitment to furthering the field and advancing the cause of adolescent health and well-being.
Click a link to view a specific 2026 awardee.
- Career Development Award in Adolescent Health
- Charles E. Irwin, Jr. New Investigators Award
- Hilary E.C Millar Award for Innovative Approaches
- Lawrence S. Neinstein Award in Educational Scholarship to Advance Adolescent/Young Adult (AYA) Health
- LGBTQIA Adolescent & Young Adult Health Research Award
- Outstanding Achievement in Adolescent Health and Medicine
- Renee R. Jenkins, MD Racial Justice and Health Equity Award
- Robert H. DuRant Award for Statistical Rigor and Innovation in Adolescent Health Research
- Vaughn Rickert Vaccine Research Award
- Regional Chapter Award
Career Development Award in Adolescent Health
The Career Development Award in Adolescent Health is directed towards promoting interest in a career in adolescent health. The historical purpose of this award is to facilitate interest in a career in adolescent medicine/health or to reinforce those who already made this decision
Recipient: Aniruddh Ajith, B.S.
Aniruddh Ajith is an MD/PhD student at the University of Pittsburgh. He works with Black youth exposed to community violence to understand how social networks and activity spaces shape violence and substance use disparities. Guided by community-based participatory research (CBPR) principles, his work centers the expertise and leadership of community partners. His long-term goal is to become a physician-scientist who designs community-rooted, network- and place-based interventions to advance health equity. In Pittsburgh, he focuses on youth violence prevention, collaborating directly with young people to identify supportive people and places that can inform strength-based interventions.
Charles E. Irwin, JR. New Investigators Award
The major focus of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine is to promote the development, synthesis, and dissemination of scientific and scholarly knowledge unique to the development and health care needs of adolescents. The Society has established the Charles E. Irwin, Jr., New Investigator Award to recognize professionals who, through excellence in research, have furthered the Society’s goals.
Finalist: Natalia Garza Philpott, MD
Title: Suffocating in Silence: The Role of Social Connection in Adolescent Asthma
Natalia Garza Philpott, MD, is a board-certified pediatrician and third-year pediatric critical care medicine fellow at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Her primary academic interests center on reducing health disparities through patient-informed, community-based approaches. Her work lies at the intersection of adolescent health and critical care, focusing on understanding how adolescents experience severe illness, the systems they rely on in moments of crisis, and how to improve those systems to optimize health outcomes.
Finalist: Elise Tirza Ohene-Kyei, MD, MPH
Title: Where Did Everyone Go? Unpacking Clinic Missed Medical Appointment Rates among Youth with HIV.
Dr. Elise Tirza Ohene-Kyei is a medical doctor, public health advocate, and storyteller whose journey spans the healthcare landscapes of Ghana, the United States, and the wider global stage.
She earned her medical degree from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, where she discovered a love for research and a lifelong commitment to advancing health, especially for vulnerable populations such as women, children, and youth. After practicing medicine in Ghana for a few years, she moved to the U.S. to pursue a Master of Public Health Education at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, focusing on Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Child and Adolescent health, and Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health.
Dr. Ohene-Kyei is also a co-founder of the Poka Health app, a menstrual health app created by African women for African women. As Chief Medical Officer, she applies her clinical expertise and research insight to bridge medical science with culturally grounded solutions, expanding health education and improving care access for women across the continent.
Beyond medicine, Dr. Ohene-Kyei is a writer at heart. She runs an award-winning blog, Letters from this Heart, using fiction to explore unspoken social and personal issues. In 2019, she self-published her debut novel, Perspectives. She is currently an Adolescent Medicine Fellow at the John’s Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Finalist: Aniruddh Ajith, B.S.
Title: Mapping Real-Time Links Between Community Assets, Trauma Reminders, and Well-Being in Black Youth
Aniruddh Ajith is an MD/PhD student at the University of Pittsburgh. He works with Black youth exposed to community violence to understand how social networks and activity spaces shape violence and substance use disparities. Guided by community-based participatory research (CBPR) principles, his work centers the expertise and leadership of community partners. His long-term goal is to become a physician-scientist who designs community-rooted, network- and place-based interventions to advance health equity. In Pittsburgh, he focuses on youth violence prevention, collaborating directly with young people to identify supportive people and places that can inform strength-based interventions.
Finalist: Anabella Beatriz Escudero-Retana, MPH, MSN
Title: Viral Suppression in Youth Living with HIV: Predictors and Outcomes from the Biktarvy Outcomes in Baltimore Youth Study (B.O.B.Y.).
Anabella Escudero-Retana is a Nurse Resident in the Surgical Trauma Intensive Care Unit at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. She has a background in epidemiology and biostatistics as well as in critical care nursing, aiming to become a nurse scientist. Anabella has focused her research on the diverse metabolic and psychiatric effects of INSTI-based drug regimens on adolescent and young adult (AYA) populations living with HIV.
Finalist: Emily L. Ewing, MA
Title: In or out of sync? Parenting behaviors at bedtime and contextual risk predict sleep concordance in vulnerable parent-adolescent dyads
Emily Ewing, MA, is a Doctoral candidate in Clinical Health Psychology at the University of Alabama. She is currently completing her doctoral internship in Behavioral Medicine at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. Her research draws on interpersonal and developmental frameworks to examine how family dynamics, particularly within parent–adolescent dyads, shape adolescent health outcomes, such as sleep. Emily envisions a career as a clinical health psychologist specializing in pediatric and family health, integrating research, clinical care, and interdisciplinary collaboration to promote youth well-being across developmental contexts.
Hilary E.C Millar Award for Innovative Approaches
The Hilary E.C. Millar Award for Innovative Approaches to Adolescent Health recognizes original and innovative programs that predominantly focus on adolescent health. This award is given to any individual, organization, or agency involved in adolescent health for an innovative, cost-effective, and successful program that enlarges the scope of adolescent health.
Recipient: Nahed Jaber, MD
Dr. Nahed Jaber is a Pediatrician and Adolescent Medicine Consultant, Head of the Adolescent Medicine Unit at the Royal Hospital, Ministry of Health, Oman.
She is the founder and physician lead of the Adolescent Medicine services in Oman, pioneering the establishment and development of the first comprehensive adolescent medicine service in the country to address the unique health needs of adolescents.
Dr. Jaber is a clinician-educator with a central role in medical education and workforce development. She serves as the physician responsible for the curriculum review, academic oversight, and clinical training in adolescent medicine within the national pediatric residency training program at Oman Medical Specialty Board. Under her leadership, adolescent medicine was successfully integrated as a mandatory rotation for all pediatric residents. Her responsibilities include structured academic teaching, bedside and clinic-based clinical supervision, mentoring, and formal evaluation of pediatric residents during their adolescent medicine rotations, ensuring competency-based training aligned with international standards. She is the recipient of the Oman Medical Specialty Board Best Trainer Award in recognition of her outstanding achievement in the Pediatric Residency Training Program for the academic year 2016/2017
In addition to her educational leadership, Dr. Jaber is the physician lead for the establishment of the pediatric-to-adult healthcare transition program. She led the design, implementation of a structured transition model aimed at improving continuity of care, patient engagement, and health outcomes for adolescents with chronic and complex health conditions as they move into adult services. This work represents a critical system-level advancement in adolescent care in Oman.
Dr. Jaber has also developed and delivered a specialized course in Adolescent Medicine to build national and regional capacity among healthcare professionals caring for adolescents. She is a strong advocate for adolescent health and serves on multiple committees at both national and international levels, contributing to policy development, education, and service improvement in adolescent health.
Lawrence S. Neinstein Award in Educational Scholarship to Advance Adolescent/Young Adult (AYA) Health
The Lawrence S. Neinstein Award in Educational Scholarship to Advance Adolescent/Young Adult (AYA) Health recognizes and supports innovative and scholarly educational projects pertaining to adolescent and young adult health and medicine.
Recipient: Meghan Martz, PhD MPH
Project Title: Building Brain-Based Resilience (3BR): A Neuroscience-Informed Program for Young Adults who Misuse Substances
Dr. Meghan Martz is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan. Her research examines the neurodevelopmental mechanisms underlying risk and resilience for substance use across adolescence and young adulthood. Using longitudinal, multimodal approaches, her work aims to identify brain-based predictors of substance use trajectories and inform targeted prevention strategies. In addition to her research, Dr. Martz is dedicated to increasing the accessibility and public understanding of addiction science, serving as Chair of the Research Society on Alcohol’s Public Outreach Committee. Dr. Martz’s research has been supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and other NIH initiatives focused on youth development and addiction science.
Recipient: Alexandra Coria, MD and Virginia Byron, MD
Project Title: Turning disease into expertise: a skill-based, youth-participatory clinical training to improve care for Kenyan adolescents with sickle cell disease
Alexandra Coria, MD, is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics and Global Health and a pediatric hospitalist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. She is an experienced medical educator, curriculum designer and global health professional with a passion for patient-friendly communication and holistic, family-centered care. After graduating from residency in the Urban Health and Advocacy Track at Boston Children’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center, she worked for the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative in Tanzania. There, she worked with Tanzanian colleagues to train providers to care for children with HIV and TB, and was involved in overhauling the clinic’s HIV training curriculum, an experience that furthered her interests in evidence-based education and curriculum design in global health. Since then, she has worked in the US and globally to design innovative, engaging curricula, workshops and learning tools on a variety of topics, including most recently collaborating on an asynchronous introductory curriculum in global health for pediatric hospital medicine fellows. She has also conducted research into best practices in caring for children with sickle cell disease in LMICs, and is thrilled to combine her interests to teach providers to provide youth-friendly care for this vulnerable and medically complex patient population.
Virginia Byron, MD (she/her) is an adolescent medicine specialist and investigator focused on engaging youth through community-based participatory research methods. She holds an undergraduate degree from Princeton University and MD from the Medical School for International Health. She completed her pediatric residency training at Tulane University and fellowship training in adolescent medicine at Columbia University. She was a 2024-25 U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Tanzania, where she implemented a clinical adolescent medicine training curriculum and applied Youth-Participatory Action Research to improve the transition of care for adolescents with sickle cell disease in a high-burden setting. She is currently a school-based health clinician with Montefiore-Einstein in New York City.
LGBTQIA Adolescent & Young Adult Health Research Award
The SAHM Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Intersex and Asexual (LGBTQIA) Adolescent and Young Adult Health Research Award supports research and program evaluation focused on LGBTQIA adolescents and young adults, ages 13 to 26 years. The goal of this award is to increase the visibility of the needs of this unique, diverse and resilient population.
Recipient: Christopher Owens, PhD, MPH
Project Title: Project HELP: Rural LGBTQ+ Youth Help-seeking Engagement Links and Predictors
Christopher Owens, PhD, MPH, (he/him), is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Behavior at the Texas A&M University Health Science Center. He received his PhD and MPH in Health Behavior from the Indiana University School of Public Health and completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the Northwestern University Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing. He is an early-career investigator who uses mixed-methods, theoretical frameworks, and multi-stakeholder groups to investigate and intervene on the multi-level factors of rural LGBTQ adolescent and young adult (AYA) sexual and mental health. His research investigates factors from the perspectives of rural LBGTQ AYA, their parents, and their healthcare providers. He has written over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, one book chapter, and presented at multiple conference oral presentations and invited talks. His research aims to improve the well-being of and implementation of evidence-based practices for rural LGBTQ AYA.
Outstanding Achievement Award in Adolescent Health and Medicine
The Outstanding Achievement Award in Adolescent Health and Medicine recognizes individuals nationally and internationally for their body of work and commitment to improving the health of and health care resources for adolescents and young adults.
Recipient: Dr. Debra Katzman, MD, FSAHM
Dr. Debra Katzman is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto and a Senior Associate Scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children, where she co-founded the Eating Disorders Program and led it for nearly two decades. A national leader in adolescent medicine, she has served as Head of the Division of Adolescent Medicine at SickKids, pediatric lead for Eating Disorder Ontario, and Past President of both the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine and the Academy for Eating Disorders. Her research focuses on the medical and developmental complexities of pediatric eating disorders, including osteoporosis, brain structure and function, and amenorrhea, as well as improving diagnostic classification for youth. Dr. Katzman has authored more than 300 publications, co-edited a widely used guide for parents, and serves as editor-in-chief of a leading adolescent medicine textbook. Her contributions have been recognized with numerous awards honoring her leadership, scholarship, and commitment to advancing care for children and adolescents.
Renee R. Jenkins, MD Racial Justice and Health Equity Award
The SAHM Renee R. Jenkins, MD Racial Justice and Health Equity Award supports research and program evaluation focused on racial justice and/or health equity within adolescent health and medicine.
Recipient: Aniruddh Ajith, B.S.
Project Title: Social Networks and Activity Spaces on Substance Use Disparities Among Black Youth Exposed to Community Violence.
Aniruddh Ajith is an MD/PhD student at the University of Pittsburgh. He works with Black youth exposed to community violence to understand how social networks and activity spaces shape violence and substance use disparities. Guided by community-based participatory research (CBPR) principles, his work centers the expertise and leadership of community partners. His long-term goal is to become a physician-scientist who designs community-rooted, network- and place-based interventions to advance health equity. In Pittsburgh, he focuses on youth violence prevention, collaborating directly with young people to identify supportive people and places that can inform strength-based interventions.
Robert H. DuRant Award for Statistical Rigor and Innovation in Adolescent Health Research
This award was established in honor of SAHM Past President Robert H. DuRant, PhD, FSAHM, who passed away in late 2009. He was recognized worldwide as a leading voice in adolescent health research, and this award fosters statistical rigor, innovation and excellence in research.
Recipient: Henna Budhwani, PhD, MPH
Abstract Title: Kings HIV Prevention Intervention Pilot Trial: Knowledge, Stigma, and Mistrust
Dr. Henna Budhwani is a medical sociologist by training and holds the endowed Michael and Paula Read Phelan Professorship in Obstetrical Nursing at Florida State University (FSU) College of Nursing, Institute on Digital Health and Innovation (IDHI). Having worked in twenty-two countries, Dr. Budhwani conducts studies to address the causes and consequences of sub-optimal health among populations that experience stigma and adverse health outcomes in resource-constrained settings. Dr. Budhwani’s research is informed by human rights constructs and adopts a multidimensional view of addressing public health and clinical care gaps. Dr. Budhwani is the FSU Translational Workforce Development (TWD) lead, UF-FSU Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Dissemination and Implementation Science Core (DISC) Co-Director, as well as Co-Director of the UF-FSU CTSA K2R program, which includes our institutional K12 award.
Vaughn Rickert Vaccine Research Award
This award was established in honor of SAHM Past President Dr. Vaughn Rickert, who passed away in 2015, this award recognizes the top-rated abstract submission focused on vaccination research.
Recipient: Holly B. Fontenot, PhD, RN/NP, FAAN, FNAP
Abstract Title: Factors associated with parents’ willingness to obtain the HPV vaccine for their child at age 9-10 based on prior decision-making experience
Holly Fontenot is the Associate Dean for Research, Professor, and the endowed Masuda Chair at the University of Hawaii at Manoa- Nursing. She is also a Full Member of the Population Sciences in the Pacific Program at the University of Hawaii Cancer Center, and an Adjunct Faculty Member at The Fenway Institute in Boston. She was tenured faculty at Boston College and an adolescent health provider at the Sidney Borum Health Center, prior to her move to Hawaii, nearly 6 years ago. Dr. Fontenot has had sustained funding for her program of research from federal, foundation, and industry grants for more than a decade. Her work, in collaboration with colleagues across disciplines focuses on adolescent health and development of innovative strategies to promote update of routine vaccines, primarily the HPV vaccine. Her work has produced outcomes at the patient, provider, and policy levels. Finally, Dr. Fontenot is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and a Distinguished Practitioner and Fellow in the National Academy of Practice.
Regional Chapter Award
The Regional Chapter Recognition Award was established in 1997 with the first award given in 1998. The intent of the award is for SAHM’s Regional Chapters to recognize individuals that work tirelessly, diligently and creatively to improve the health and well-being of adolescents and young adults.
2024 Recipient: Lisa J. Sanders, MD
Southeast Regional Chapter Nominee
Lisa J. Sanders is an Associate Professor in the University of South Florida (USF) Department of Pediatrics Division of Infectious Diseases. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of Florida College of Medicine. She completed fellowship training in adult Infectious Diseases at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and the University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB). Dr. Sanders has directed outpatient HIV care at the Hillsborough County Department of Health and the 1917 Clinic at UAB. She returned to USF as a consultant in 2016 and assumed the role of Executive Director at the Ybor Youth Clinic, a health clinic for youth ages 13 to 24, in 2019. While there she has been instrumental in obtaining federal and state contracts and grants to support clinic services, establishing a medical-student run afterhours clinic to expand STI/HIV testing services. and fostering collaborations within USF and in the community to better meet the needs of clinic patients. Her research interests include HIV prevention, sexually transmitted infections, and the impact of social determinants of health on the health needs of older adolescents and young adults.
2025 Recipient: Ngozi Oketah, MBBS, MPH, MRCPI, FRCPCH, FPAED
International Chapter: Northern Hemisphere Nominee
Dr. Ngozi Oketah is a Consultant in General Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at Children’s Health Ireland and a specialist pediatrician for the Child and Adolescent community mental health services, Dublin. She has demonstrated a longstanding
commitment to improving the health and well-being of adolescents and young adults through diligent, youth-centred clinical care, with particular expertise in complex mental health needs and eating disorders.
Dr. Oketah serves as Director of International Adolescent Health Week and special advisor for the International Association for Adolescent Health, where she provides creative and sustained leadership, mentoring youth ambassadors from over 40 countries and strengthening global engagement in adolescent health. Her leadership reflects a tireless commitment to amplifying youth voices and advancing collaborative, culturally responsive approaches to care and advocacy.
An active contributor to the adolescent health community, Dr. Oketah has supported the mission of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine through her service on its Mental Health Committee and the Scientific Research Abstract Committee, and IAHW SIG leadership. She is a Co-Chair of the Adolescent Medicine Network in Ireland, supporting professional
collaboration and high standards of adolescent-focused care. She is a Fellow of the Faculty of Pediatrics, Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and a Fellow of the Royal College of Pediatrics’ and Child Health (UK).
In 2025, she was the recipient of the SAHM International chapter Northern Hemisphere recognition award, she was also a recipient of the Minority recognition awards Northern Ireland (MRANI) Excellence in Health care award. Her career is defined by tireless service, collaborative leadership, and an enduring commitment to improving the lives and well-being of adolescents and young adults.