AMA Foundation to honor 6 with Excellence in Medicine awards

One award recipient has practiced for more than 50 years and used to make house calls on horseback.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. Feb. 5, 2007.

From her childhood home atop a rescue mission in Philadelphia, Jeannette E. South-Paul, MD, watched as the needy and homeless came for food and help. Her parents ran the mission, and family members lived above the center when they weren't serving hot meals and offering comfort and encouragement.

It's where Dr. South-Paul learned to care for the needy, a lesson she now passes on to medical students who provide free medical care with her at the Matilda Theiss Family Health Center in Pittsburgh. For years, the family physician has been an advocate for the underserved and minority populations, and she devotes at least two days a week treating patients at the Pittsburgh clinic.

"We've got to take care of the uninsured, and we've got to keep them close to the minds and hearts of physicians," said Dr. South-Paul, chair of family medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Dr. South-Paul is among six physicians who will be honored with 2007 AMA Foundation Excellence in Medicine awards at a dinner Feb. 12 in Washington, D.C.

Dr. South-Paul will receive the Pride in the Profession Award, which the foundation each year bestows upon four U.S. physicians who aid underserved groups. The other Pride winners are: general physician Lawrence P. Emberton, MD, of Edmonton, Ky.; surgeon Appannagari "Dev" GnanaDev, MD, of Colton, Calif.; and neurosurgeon Gary VanderArk, MD, of Englewood, Colo.

"It's really quite an honor. I'm quite touched by it," Dr. South-Paul said. "You don't do these things because you want to be honored. You do it because it's the right thing to do."