Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship

Proposals for the 2013 Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship are currently being accepted.

Download the application form, which includes detailed instructions.

Applications are due on February 25, 2013 at 5:00pm Central Time.

Mail: Return your application and supplemental materials to - Women Physicians Congress, American Medical Association, 515 N. State St., Chicago, IL 60654

To better ensure a timely arrival, we recommend you use a courier service such as FedEx, UPS or DHL, rather than the United States Postal Service First Class.

Email: You can submit the application and supplemental materials via email - you may either save the completed application to your computer or scan your application and email it to: wpc@ama-assn.org

Note: For additional information, please call (312) 464-4743.

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.

2010 Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship Winners

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 winner announced

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 winners

In 2008, the AMA WPC Governing Council decided to award two scholarships.

The first scholarship was presented to Sue Yom, MD, PhD. Dr. Yom 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 winners

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.

Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship winner in the news

Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPHIL, the first person to receive the Joan F. Giambalvo Memorial Scholarship, is the primary author of an article in the July 20 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). The authors of the article, entitled “The ‘Gender Gap’ in Academic Medical Literature- a 35 year perspective” found that while the proportion of women among both first and senior physician-authors of original research in the United States has increased, women still compose a minority of the authors of original research and guest editorials in the journals. View abstract of article.

Dr. Jagsi has also Giambalvo Scholarship funding to research the gender gap in the attainment of independent funding for research. Her findings were recently published in the Annuls of Internal Medicine. View abstract of article.

Read more about Dr. Jagsi and the AMA Foundation’s Fund for the Advancement of Women.

“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.