Dr. Schafer Receives Prestigious Williams Award: Two Decades of Progress in Internal Medicine
January 9, 2012
Dr. Andrew I. Schafer will receive the APM's (Association of Professors of Medicine) highest honor - the Williams Award � at the association's Winter Meeting 2012. The Robert H. Williams, MD, Distinguished Professor Award acknowledges outstanding leadership by a chair of a department of internal medicine at a medical school. According to the official announcement, it is considered to be 'the most prestigious prize in the field of academic internal medicine.'�The nominating committee noted that Dr. Schafer 'is the single department chair who has had the most significant impact on academic internal medicine over the past two decades.'
Since joining NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine College in 2007, Dr. Schafer has furthered a strategic vision for the Department of Medicine, including a number of transformative programs encompassing all divisions within the department. Editor of the book, 'The Vanishing Physician-Scientist?,' he has also pursued solutions to creating a supportive academic environment for the young physician-scientist. As part of this overarching goal, the APM is acknowledging his 'outstanding' service in the 'development and leadership of the APM Physician-Scientist Initiative,' an initiative that has resulted in a collaborative effort with 13 of the National Institutes of Health agencies. The effort has led to a set of recommendations entitled, 'Revitalization of the Nation's Physician-Scientist Workforce.'
'Entering the 21st century,' says Dr. Schafer, 'the extraordinary pace of discovery in biomedical sciences and the rapid technological advances in clinical practice have created a widening knowledge gap � even language barrier � between practicing physicians and laboratory scientists. It is important to understand the other contemporary factors � demographic, sociologic and economic � that have increasingly discouraged physicians from entering research careers.'
Dr. Schafer is the E. Hugh Luckey Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Weill Medical College of Cornell University.� Previously, he served as the Frank Wister Thomas Professor and Chair for the Department of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (2002-2007) and as the Bob and Vivian Smith Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine (1988-2002).� A member of the APM since 1997, he has been actively involved in the association, serving as its president in 2011.� Dr. Schafer earned his MD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and completed his internal medicine residency at the University of Chicago Hospitals and Clinics.� He went on to complete his fellowship in hematology at Harvard Medical School Brigham and Women's Hospital.