Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship

The application for the 2014 Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship  will be available in November 2013. To be eligible for consideration, one of the principle or co-principle investigators must be a medical student or physician.

Women currently represent approximately 50% of matriculating medical students and 30% of all practicing physicians.  This continued increase of women in the profession is believed to be effecting the way medicine is practiced and delivered in the United States.  However, there is a lack of empirical studies providing comprehensive and/or reliable data about such phenomenon.  As a result, stereotypes, misinformation and unsubstantiated theories about the potential effects of women in the physician workforce are sometimes suggested by the media and others. Research supported by the Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship Fund on issues generated by and/or affecting women in medicine is essential to evaluating the impact of women on the medical workforce and providing important baselines for understanding medicine in the 21st century.  Such research also will help the AMA to better serve women physicians.

Joan Fara Giambalvo received her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and, in 1956, her medical degree from Temple University Medical School. Dr. Giambalvo was an intern at Temple University Hospital and certified in her residency by the American Board of Anesthesiology. Dr. Giambalvo passed away on May 14, 1971, at age 39, of liposarcoma.

If you would like further information regarding the scholarship, send us an e-mail.

2012 Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship Recipients

Linda Brodsky, MD & Roberta Gebhard, DO, co-chairs of the Gender Equity Task Force, American Medical Women's Association
Title: Work Habits of Women Physicians: Request for Planning Grant

Natalie Anne Clark, MD, University of Michigan Medical School
Title: Conceiving Conception: Fertility Perceptions among American Physicians

Lora C. Denton, MD, FACP, Memorial Health University Medical Center
Title: Flexible Work Options: Finding Feasible Solutions to Keep Women in the Workplace

Lisa Kairis, MD Loma Linda University
Title: Gender Differences in Practice Patterns of Obstetricians/Gynecologists: A Critical Shortage of Female Obstetricians Who Perform Deliveries

Marcella Nunez-Smith, MD, MHS, Yale School of Medicine
Title: Promotion and Retention of Diversity in Medical Education: Gender

2011 Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship Recipients

Elizabeth Breen, MD is an Associate Professor of Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Her research will investigate the impact of family on a female surgeon’s career. Women represent over half of matriculating medical students. Thus, women will need to play a large role in the field of surgery in the years to come. For women surgeons, the optimal time to build careers coincides with the optimal time for building a family. This could hinder the progress of women in the surgical field. Dr. Breen will study the correlation of certain family stages with career productivity. The resulting research could lead to changes to make surgery more compatible with a healthy work/life balance.

Heather Paladine, MD is Residency Director and Assistant Clinical Professor at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. She will investigate the key characteristics, benefits and challenges of women family physicians who practice in rural settings. Rural areas of the United States suffer from a shortage of physicians. Currently, women physicians are more likely to practice in urban areas. As more female physicians enter the workforce, this difference has significant implications for the availability of health care in rural areas. Dr. Paladine’s research will help to determine the best ways to attract and retain female physicians in rural areas.

2010 Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship Recipients

Dr. Rachel Levine and Dr. Hilit Mechaber are the 2010 Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship recipients.

Dr. Levine is the Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Dr. Mechaber is the Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

Today with over 50% of medical students being female, Drs. Levine and Mechaber believe the decisions these students make during their education and throughout their life span as a physician will have a profound impact on the medical profession. They also believe mentoring to be critical to the personal and professional development of medical students as well as for career planning. Nevertheless, best practices for mentoring female medical students have not been studied thoroughly. By analyzing data from a series of student and faculty focus groups, the doctors hope to find new techniques that may assist educators in developing effective mentoring programs.

Read more about Drs. Levine and Mechaber and the Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship.

2009 Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship Recipient

2009’s recipient was Nicole J. Borges, PhD. Dr. Borges is the Director of Medical Education Research and an Associate Professor with the Department of Community Health at Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine.

Dr. Borges and her team of investigators plan to survey a representative sample of all women physicians in academic medicine. The goal of her study is to gain perspective on how, when, and why physicians choose an academic path. Each physician will be asked a pre-established set of questions constructed by a group of career development and medical education experts and pilot tested. Dr. Borges hopes that the knowledge gained from this study will assist women physicians on career development and decision making in academic medicine. She hopes to submit her findings to scholarly journals on medical education and to present at an upcoming AAMC conference.

2008 Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship Recipients

 

The first scholarship was presented to Sue Yom, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). In her study, Dr. Yom will examine why women faculty leave and the costs associated by the respective institutions due to this lack of retention. In a 2002 survey conducted by her institution, it was found that while both male and female physicians derived great satisfaction from their work, women had more critical views and negative experiences in a number of areas ranging from income satisfaction to support for their lives outside of work. Dr. Yom plans to design a new survey based on the data found in the 2002 survey and administer the survey to all male and female faculty who held an academic appointment at UCSF from 1997-2007. As she poses questions specific to the data acquired in the 2002 survey, she hopes to identify specific reasons women are leaving practice, the costs associated with staying in practice, and the current retention efforts aimed at women physicians. In addition to submitting her findings for publication and various presentations, Dr. Yom plans to present her findings to UCSF and other leading medical centers to encourage interventions designed to reduce attrition among all faculty, but particularly female faculty.

The second scholarship was presented to Maurice Clifton, MD, MSEd. Dr. Clifton is the Associate Dean for Admissions and Student Affairs with the Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, GA. In his study, he will examine the two kinds of obstacles he believes are preventing more women from practicing in rural areas. The first type of obstacle relates to characteristics of the physician (e.g. comfort level living in a rural area). The second type relates to the practice location in which the physician may practice/teach (e.g. quality of schools). Through qualitative open-ended questions, Dr. Clifton hopes to better understand these obstacles faced by women physicians in order to design interventions to better target applicants to serve rural areas. His survey will be administered to women physicians practicing in the Southeast for between one and three years. Women to be surveyed will come from the following three specialties: family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics. In addition to submitting his findings for publication and various presentations, Dr. Clifton also plans to use these findings to develop a grant proposal to solicit additional funds which may be used in designing interventions.

2007 Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship Recipients

Ethan Jewett, MA and Patricia Turner, MD were the 2007 Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship recipients.

Mr. Jewett hopes to identify the barriers currently keeping inactive physicians out of practice in order to develop useful solutions and models for physicians to reenter the workforce. Dr. Turner is interested in examining the impact questions and attitudes regarding childbearing have on a woman’s decision to pursue a career in surgery. She will also investigate if a career choice of surgery has negative impacts on a woman’s likelihood to bear children.

2006 Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship Recipients

Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPHIL, researched the gender gap in the attainment of independent funding for research. Her findings were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. View abstract of article.

 

“Despite the growing number and influence of women in medicine, female physicians still lag behind their male counterparts in pay and career advancement—we need to eliminate this gap.”

—AMA Past-President Nancy H. Nielson, MD, PhD

The Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship provides a unique opportunity for health care researchers to identify and address the issues that affect women physicians and medical students. Your gift to the Fund for the Advancement of Women will make this important research possible. Please donate today.