2023 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 award.

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 New Investigator Award to recognize professionals who, through excellence in research, have furthered the Society’s goals.

Recipient: Kacie Kidd

Title: “Parents of Gender Diverse Youth: Support Sought, Received, and Still Needed”

Dr. Kacie Kidd is an Adolescent Medicine Specialist and Assistant Professor at the West Virginia University School of Medicine.

She is also the Medical Director of the WVU Medicine Children’s Gender & Sexual Development Clinic where she provides care for transgender and nonbinary adolescents and young adults as well as those with variations in sexual development. Dr. Kidd’s research focuses on improving health outcomes for transgender and nonbinary youth using community partnered mixed methods approaches within a health equity framework. She has published more than 20 peer-reviewed articles related to the health and lived experiences of transgender and nonbinary youth and their families. 

LGBTQIA ADOLESCENT & YOUNG ADULT HEALTH RESEARCH AWARD

This is the fifth annual Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Intersex and Asexual (LGBTQIA) Adolescent and Young Adult Health Research Award to support 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: Cale Roberts, MD

Project Title:  “Qualitative Analysis of Transgender and Gender Diverse Patient Experiences in a Pediatric Emergency Department: A Clinical Care Innovation Project.”

Dr. Roberts  project explores the unique needs of pediatric transgender and gender diverse patients (TGD) in a pediatric emergency department.

Cale is currently a fellow in Pediatric Emergency Medicine at the University of Washington/Seattle Children’s Hospital where he also completed Pediatrics residency. He grew up outside of Kansas City, Missouri and went on to complete his undergraduate and medical education at the University of Missouri. Cale’s current research is focused on improving the emergency department experience for gender diverse youth. Outside of work you can find him and his partner enjoying live sporting events, concerts, traveling, trying out new bars and restaurants or bingeing the latest popular TV series. 

Hilary E.C. Millar Award for Innovative Approaches to Adolescent Health

The Hilary E.C. Millar Award for Innovative Approaches to Adolescent Health recognizes original and innovative programs that predominantly focus on adolescent health.

Recipient: Adolescent Health Initiative

Adolescent Health Initiative (AHI) is a program of the Michigan Medicine Dept. Of Community Health Services with the mission to advance innovative adolescent-centered health care through practice improvement, education, research, and youth and community engagement.

  • AHI is comprised of an interdisciplinary team of public health professionals, social workers, health educators, medical providers, project management staff and marketing and events specialists. All AHI programs are formed in partnership with a Teen Advisory Council as well as a Professional Advisory Committee comprised of faculty from the departments of Adolescent Medicine, Pediatrics, Family Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Emergency Medicine, Psychiatry, Nursing, Public Health, Social Work Comprehensive Gender Services, Community Programs and Services, and Patient and Family-Centered care.
  • Together they have developed an innovative and comprehensive 18-month intervention they call the “Adolescent Champion Model” that addresses 12 key health environment, policies and practices such as: Access to Care, Mental Health, Nutritional Health, Sexual Health, Engagement and Cultural Responsiveness.
  • Champion Teams conducts an assessment. Based on the assessments, coaches provide the clinic team with a customized implementation plan that includes evidence-based resources and best –practices.
  • To continue building clinical capacity and make the model more sustainable, AHI has trained multiple “Replication Partners” across the United States including Arizona, Louisiana, and Wisconsin.
  • Since its inception in 2014, 176 sites in 19 states have participated or are currently participating.  
  • As a national capacity building assistance provider, AHI has also collaborated with many federal and nationally recognized organizations to improve adolescent health across the country.
Lawrence S. Neinstein Award in Young Adult Health 

Recipient: Fransisca Agung, MD
Dr.  Agung is awarded this prestigious and relatively new award, based on her proposal to provide a central repository of a 4-week training program on basic adolescent health services. 

Dr. Agung is a Pediatrician with the Department of Child and Adolescent Health, School of Medicine, Universitas Pelita Harapan, Indonesia. In 2014, she was appointed as an expert witness in the Indonesian Constitutional Court to assist a UNICEF led coalition to increase the minimum age for marriage in Indonesia.  

She was enrolled in the MOOC on Global Adolescent Health run by Professors Sawyer and Patton from the Univ. Of Melbourne, including observerships at the KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Singapore and UCSF, San Francisco.  As part of her PhD studies, in 2021 she developed an online training platform to deliver material on adolescent health to Indonesian health professionals. 

Outstanding Achievement in Adolescent Health and Medicine

The Outstanding Achievement Award in Adolescent Medicine was established in 1981 to recognize individuals nationally and internationally for their commitment to improving the health and healthcare resources for adolescents and young adults.

Recipient: Neville Golden, MD, FSAHM

Dr. Golden is the Chief of Adolescent Medicine and the Marron and Mary Elizabeth Kendrick Professor in Pediatrics at Stanford University where he has served since 2007.

For more than a decade, he has trained over 35 fellows in Adolescent Medicine and has worked to develop clinical and research programs that address the needs of adolescents and young adults from diverse social and economic backgrounds, including a nationally -recognized eating disorders program, a Mobile Teen Van that serves homeless and uninsured youth, the Teen and Young Adult Clinic, Adolescent Gynecology clinic, Health Weight Clinic, Gender Clinic, The San Francisco Mission Community Clinic, and a program for incarcerated youth at the Santa Clara Juvenile Detention facility.

RACIAL JUSTICE AND HEALTH EQUITY AWARD

‎The Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAHM) is excited to announce the second SAHM Racial Justice and Health Equity Award. ‎The purpose of this annual award is to support research and program evaluation focused on ‎racial justice and/or health equity within adolescent health and medicine. 

Recipient: Jack Rusley, MD, MHS

Project Title:  The Use of New Media to improve Access to Sexual Reproductive Health Services among Young Black Males in a Community-Based Setting

Dr. Rusley is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at Hasbro Children’s Hospital and the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. He is also adjunct faculty at the Brown School of Public Health in the Department of Health Services, Policy and Practice.

Dr. Rusley will conduct qualitative interviews with young Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC youth) in Providence, RI to understand the barriers and facilitators to their mental health, with a focus on the impact of school resources officers (SROs).

REGIONAL CHAPTER RECOGNITION AWARD

This award recognizes a Regional Chapter member for outstanding service to a particular chapter. 

Recipient:  Edith Apondi Ogalo

Dr. Edith Apondi was nominated for her tireless work advancing the health of adolescents in Western Kenya.

Dr. Apondi is a skilled pediatric consultant who has brought adolescent medicine to Western Kenya. She directed a large adolescent HIV program in a low resource setting, where she combined her medical knowledge of HIV and non-communicable diseases, with an instinctive understanding of adolescent developmental needs. She was the driving force behind the design and implementation of the Rafiki Center of Excellence in Adolescent Health, the first multidisciplinary youth-friendly adolescent clinic in Kenya. Her clinical vision created a center that improved viral load and other outcomes for their HIV infected youth, integrated peer mentors to maximize adherence and self-care, co-located family planning, mental health, and pharmacy services, created educational programs that were fun and well attended, and launched social programs to further engage youth.

She has developed adolescent health services at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) and the AMPATH (Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare) multi-university collaboration in Eldoret, Kenya. AMPATH is a partnership between Moi University, MTRH, Indiana University, Duke, Brown, Mt. Sinai, University of Toronto and other North American universities, and the Kenyan Government.

VAUGHN RICKERT VACCINE RESEARCH AWARD

Established in honor of SAHM Past President Dr. Vaughn Rickert, clinical psychologist, past President of SAHM and Adolescent ‎Medicine Section Chief at Indiana University, who passed away unexpectedly in June of 2015.  In addition to ‎his skills as a leader, mentor, and collaborator, Vaughn was deeply and enthusiastically committed to ‎improving rates of adolescent vaccination through research and advocacy. To honor his exceptional ‎service to SAHM and his contributions to adolescent health, SAHM and Indiana University have ‎established this award for a period of 10 years, starting with the 2017 SAHM meeting in New Orleans. ‎This award recognizes the top-rated abstract submission focused on vaccination research. 

Recipient: Annemarie Swamy, MD, PhD
Title: A System-Level Approach to Improve Uptake of First COVID-19 Vaccine Dose Among Various Age Groups Within a Primary Care Setting: The Value of Health Educators

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