2008 ATOD Section Award Winners
By Andre Stanley
Lifetime Achievement Award – Ronald M. Davis, MD
Dr. Ron Davis, a preventive medicine physician, most recently served as the 162nd president of the American Medical Association (AMA), from June 2007 to June 2008. Dr. Davis was elected to the AMA Board of Trustees (BOT) in June 2001 and re-elected in June 2005. He had previously served as the first resident physician member of the AMA-BOT (1984–1987). Since receiving his BS degree from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), MD degree and an MA degree in public policy studies from the University of Chicago, Dr. Davis has served in many leadership capacities in organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Michigan Department of Public Health and the Henry Ford Health System. He represented the AMA on the Board of Commissioners of the Joint Commission from 2002 to 2006. Dr. Davis was the founding editor (1992–1998) of Tobacco Control; an international peer-reviewed journal published by the British Medical Association, and was North American editor of the British Medical Journal (1998–2001). He is board certified in preventive medicine. It is very sad to note that Dr. Davis passed away at his home in East Lansing, Michigan after a courageous 10-month battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 52 years old.
Section Leadership Award – Thomas K. Greenfield, PhD
Dr. Tom Greenfield is a senior scientist and the scientific director of the Alcohol Research Group (ARG). He also directs ARGs National Alcohol Research Center. In addition, Greenfield serves as an adjunct clinical faculty member of the clinical services research training program at the University of California at San Francisco’s department of psychiatry. After eight years of research and practice at Washington State University and before coming to ARG in 1991, he served as associate director for research at the Marin Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drug Problems. He has served as vice president and secretary of the Kettil Bruun Society for Social and Epidemiological Study of Alcohol and currently serves on the Extramural Advisory Board of the NIAAA. Following degrees in astronomy and space science, Greenfield earned a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan.
Community-Based Leadership Award – Diane Riibe
Executive director Diane Riibe has led Project Extra Mile since its inception in 1995. Her vision and unparalleled passion for preventing underage drinking have helped Project Extra Mile to expand its efforts to cover more than half of Nebraska's population. Project Extra Mile’s mission is to create a community consensus that clearly states that underage alcohol use is illegal, unhealthy and unacceptable. Ms. Riibe's experience and knowledge has garnered national media attention to the issue of underage drinking.
Slade Memorial Advocacy Award – Thomas P. Houston, MD
Dr. Tom Houston is the director of the OhioHealth Nicotine Dependence Program at the McConnell Heart Health Center at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Houston started his work in tobacco control in 1979 by starting a chapter of Doctors Ought to Care in Mississippi, engaging kids in school, making presentations on tobacco control to family medicine groups and putting up the first-ever purchased tobacco counter-advertising billboard and bus stop ads in the country. The publicity over those activities led to a two-year stint as "Mississippi DOC," a 15 minute live TV program on the CBS affiliate in Jackson. Dr. Houston helped establish scores of DOC groups in family medicine residencies, made presentations to all kinds of audiences, and were a thorn in the side of Philip Morris, picketing the Virginia Slims tournaments and ridiculing their ads and promotions around the nation. The US Surgeon General gave DOC the Medallion for its work, in 1988.
Dr. Houston arrived at the American Medical Association (AMA) in 1990, and began to push the organization into a national leadership position in tobacco control, with great help from House of Delegates leaders like Dr. Ron Davis (former AMA President), and a host of others. He chaired the AMA's second national conference on tobacco control in 1992, and in 1994 The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) came to him with the idea of SmokeLess States, a national program that became a 10-year project in education, advocacy, and tobacco control policy change that would eventually invest over $90 million in 46 states and DC, and create an infrastructure for state-level tobacco control programs that echoes to this day. The AMA House of Delegates also voted to pursue hosting a World Conference on Tobacco or Health (WCTOH), and he led the effort that culminated in the 2000 WCTOH in Chicago, still the largest tobacco control conference in history.
Best Student Abstract – Ashley Skooglund
Ashley Skooglund is currently an MPH candidate in the Department of Applied Sciences and Public Health at Indiana University in Bloomington. Ms. Skooglund’s winning abstract, Can Drug Treatment Courts promote self-sufficiency and self-efficacy?: A qualitative exploratory study, co-authored with Fernando Ona PhD, MPH and Zobeida Bonilla PhD, MPH, was presented at the 136th APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition held in San Diego.
Ms. Skooglund’s public health interests include the prevention, treatment and justice programming and policy surrounding alcohol and drug issues and utilizing the systems approach to best understand and develop sustainable public health programs and policy planning at state and local levels. Upon graduation, she hopes to begin a specialized program to assist DTC participants in meeting their employment, educational and social needs.
