"Not one of us can do much alone," said Foege. "The power is in ... the contributions of millions of people in research and academics."

Foege, Emory professor of international health at the Rollins School of Public Health (RSPH) and senior adviser to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was in Manhattan, just a few miles from ground zero, to accept the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service for his role in global health and disease prevention. Often called America's Nobels, the Lasker awards for 56 years have honored those who have played pivotal roles in combating disease.

Foege's career has touched the lives of millions and has been defined by unwavering optimism that global diseases can be conquered. As the director of a small medical center in Nigeria in 1966, Foege devised a strategy of targeting inoculations to those most susceptible as quickly as possible. This "surveillance and containment" technique became the standard for dealing with outbreaks of infectious diseases. He later headed the smallpox eradication program for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and in 1974 was sent with his family to India, where the disease was rampant. By 1979, naturally occurring smallpox had been eradicated.

President Jimmy Carter appointed Foege director of the CDC, where he served from 1977 to 1983 as the nation's top "disease detective." During his tenure, CDC researchers discovered toxic shock syndrome's link to tampons and Reyes syndrome's association with aspirin use in children. Foege also established the first task force on AIDS, led by James Curran (now RSPH dean), which issued early warnings about AIDS and how it spreads.

In 1984, Foege formed the Task Force for Child Survival, which increased childhood vaccination rates worldwide from 20% to 80% in six years. In 1986, he became executive director of the Carter Center, helping combat diseases from Guinea worm to river blindness. Under his guidance since 1999 as senior medical adviser to the Gates Foundation, the world's largest philanthropy has given $1.9 billion to health-related projects around the world.

Foege, 68, retired from Emory and the Gates Foundation in December but will continue in an advisory role to both as a professor emeritus and fellow.

An anatomy and cell biology faculty member for 20 years, Adkison often devoted weekends to mentoring. While working full time as an associate professor and presiding over the university senate (where she shepherded through a cafeteria benefits program that included child care), she attended Georgia State University in the evenings, earning her law degree in 1991. After successfully practicing health care and intellectual property law for four years, she returned to academic medicine.

Adkison implemented a program to match high-ranking female faculty with junior female faculty to get the latter more involved in publications, committees, or other activities that would make them more promotable. She wrote the school's appointments and promotions guidelines that help women overcome some of the hurdles in the tenure process, such as provisions that keep women from being penalized who have children or find themselves in unusual family circumstances. She helped write the university's affirmative action policy and chaired the medical school's first affirmative action committee.

But most of her efforts on behalf of women have been one on one, says medical school Dean Thomas Lawley. "Women faculty disproportionately take advantage of her open door policy. She systematically encourages medical school chairs to recruit, retain, and promote women and to fund their attendance at leadership training conferences and programs. She has also worked to place women (not just one woman) on every standing and search committee."

Phillip Brachman's face and name have become familiar to the nation in recent months as he's been called upon for his expertise in anthrax. A professor of international health in the Rollins School of Public Health, he recently received the Abraham Lilienfeld Award from the American Public Health Association.

Shari Capers, associate director for strategic planning since 1998, now directs that function for the Woodruff Health Sciences Center.

Surgeon Jeff Carney is Grady Hospital's new chief of urology.

The first medical school recipients of $5,000 awards for innovative education projects are pediatrician Louis Elsas for medical genetics in internal medicine, pathologist Hunter Hardy for enhanced imaging of pathology specimens to use in a web-based teaching supplement, resident Michael Okun for a neurological exam video to help teach neuroscience and neurology to faculty and students, emergency medicine physician Tammie Quest for a curriculum on communicating bad news and death disclosure, and dermatologist Mary Spraker for a web-based dermatology teaching curriculum.

Carol Hogue, Jules and Deen Terry professor of maternal and child health and professor of epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health, has been elected president of the American College of Epidemiology.

To help steer Atlanta's participation in biotech initiatives, the Metro Chamber of Commerce has formed a biotech task force, co-chaired by Michael Johns, executive vice president for health affairs and director of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center.

For the first time, the same in-house lawyer is responsible for all related legal issues in the health sciences at Emory. After a national search, Jane Jordan is Emory's new deputy general counsel and chief counsel for Emory Healthcare and the Woodruff Health Sciences Center.

Phyllis Kozarsky is president-elect of the International Society of Travel Medicine.

Alison Lauber and Tom Zuber, family and preventive medicine, edited Patient Education and Preventive Medicine, published by WB Saunders.

Cardiothoracic surgeon Kamal Mansour and vascular surgeon Atef Salam received the "Shield of Medicine" from the Medical Scientific Society of Egypt as two of the 10 most outstanding Egyptian doctors in the world.

Eric Ottesen, director of the RSPH Lymphatic Filariasis Support Center, recently won the Bernhard Nocht Medal, joining an elite group of recipients that includes Albert Schweitzer. This was the first time the medal has been given since 1987.

Kimberly Rask, attending physician at Grady's urgent care center, is editor-in-chief of EBM Solution's clinical advisory committee.

Robert Rich, executive associate dean of the School of Medicine, received funding from the National Center for Research Resources to develop and improve animal resources at Emory.

Barbara Schroeder, who in 1995 became the first full-time strategic planner at Emory, is now associate dean for fiscal affairs and chief financial officer of the School of Medicine.

Nanette Wenger, chief of cardiology at Grady, is on the scientific advisory board of WomenHeart, a 20-member panel of prominent American physicians and nurses. WomenHeart's annual leadership awards are called the "Wenger Awards" in her honor.

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Clarification

From the Director  /  Letters

Of mice and men

Lives on the line

Our GRA connection

Moving Forward  /  Noteworthy

On point: Perspectives on bioterrorism

Coming to a helipad near you

In Memory

Charles Huguley, Jr., former American Cancer Society professor of clinical oncology, left an indelible mark on the School of Medicine, where he spent his entire career. He was one of The Emory Clinic's founding partners in 1953, a time when academic medical clinics were considered radical and subversive by many in medicine. A popular teacher of medical students, he also directed the division of hematology and oncology until retiring in 1988. Huguley died of a stroke September 6 at the age of 83.

Evangeline Papageorge was a legend in her own time. In a career spanning almost half a century, she touched countless lives as the School of Medicine's first full-time female faculty member and first dean of students. She came to Emory in 1928 as a graduate student and began teaching biochemistry the following year. She was appointed dean of students in 1956, serving in that role for 19 years. She officially retired in 1975, but continued to serve on the school's alumni board. In 1993, medical school alumni created the Evangeline Papageorge Teaching Award, the highest honor given to a faculty member for teaching. Papageorge died September 15 at 94.