Nominations Open for 2023 AAFP Public Health Award

As National Public Health Week gets underway, and as family physicians across the country continue working tirelessly to serve their communities, active AAFP members are invited to nominate themselves for another member for the 2023 AAFP Public Health Award by May 15.

Nomination Process at a Glance

Members may nominate themselves or another member by submitting the nomination form, a separate document (limited to two pages) that details the nominee’s experiences in public health leadership and a letter of support from the nominee’s AAFP chapter. The packet — as well as questions about the process — should be emailed to the Academy’s Division of Research, Science and Health of the Public.  Members will be notified that their materials have been received.

The winner will be selected by a panel of the executive committee of the AAFP Commission on Health of the Public and Science, and will be announced at the AAFP Congress of Delegates meeting in Chicago on Oct. 26.

2022 Winner Reflects on Award, Projects

Monica Hahn, M.D., M.P.H., M.S., won the 2022 AAFP Public Health Award for her contributions to public health in a number of areas, including her leadership of the Pacific AIDS Education and Training Center (PAETC) at the University of California, San Francisco. She told AAFP News that her dedication to justice and health equity reflect her experiences growing up as the daughter of Korean immigrants and witnessing the obstacles her community faced.

“I am grateful to say that my core values of health equity, cultural humility, racial solidarity and collective liberation have served as my guiding north star since before I began my medical and public health training,” said Hahn, who also serves as an associate professor in the Department of Family & Community Medicine at UCSF. “This has remained the framework for my life’s passion and work ever since.”

At PAETC, Hahn is working with medical student Aminta Kouyate, M.S., to develop an interactive anti-racism training curriculum for health care professionals who care for patients with HIV/AIDS. Hahn said she has found the experience “immensely rewarding,” and hopes the work will raise awareness about health inequities while filling in knowledge gaps about systemic oppression, cultural humility and other frameworks.

“I am constantly striving to strengthen my skills as a health equity leader by interrogating and disrupting deeply rooted systems of oppression in medicine and public health, while striving to elevate and amplify community voices traditionally silenced in health care leadership,” Hahn said. “I see my role as a physician advocate, educator and agent of change. I definitely see my role as a family physician as being a vehicle for social change, with the intention of fostering collective liberation and anti-oppression praxis in all I do.”