Nominations Now Open for 2024 AAFP Public Health Award

As family physicians work to make positive differences in small towns and big cities throughout the country, active members are invited to nominate themselves or another member for the 2024 AAFP Public Health Award. Applications are due by March 1.   

Make a Nomination 

Members may nominate themselves or another member by submitting a form along with a summary of the nominee’s experiences in public health leadership and a letter of support from their chapter. Full details are on the AAFP Public Health Award webpage. Email publichealth@aafp.org with questions.

The winner will be selected by a panel of the Academy’s Commission on Health of the Public and Science, and will be announced at the next AAFP Congress of Delegates meeting in Phoenix Sept. 23-25. 

Reflections From 2023 Award Winner 

Last year’s winner, Erin Corriveau, M.D., M.P.H., received the Public Health Award in part because of her work in containing a large drug-resistant tuberculosis outbreak that spanned parts of eastern Kansas and western Missouri — an experience that formed a strong bond between her and the families in the community involved. 

“I just fell in love with the patients and the work,” Corriveau said. “I realized all of these people have very full lives that they’re living, but none of them had had any preventive care, primary care or a family doctor, so our team started to get creative about all the ways we could help… It became such a great pleasure also to get to know these families — to sing with them, share a meal, talk about health and well-being overall. Most of these patients who we treated for TB have become my patients for the long haul.”

Corriveau is no stranger to helping those in the community. Her interest in public health and community work began early in her career, as she helped develop New Mexico’s Health Extension Rural Officer program while she was at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine in Albuquerque, first as a medical student and then during her residency. 

Currently, Corriveau serves as a deputy health officer and the tuberculosis physician with the Wyandotte County, Kan., Public Health Department, where she helped establish the local Health Equity Task Force, which ensures the community has a voice in the development and implementation of county health department programs and research. She also directs the Division of Community Health at the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City.  

In addition to these roles, Corriveau has done volunteer work with non-profit organizations throughout the Kansas City metropolitan area such as the Midwest Music Foundation’s RockDocs partnership and Care Beyond the Boulevard, which offers free health care services to unhoused and uninsured individuals.  

“I applaud the AAFP for recognizing the important contributions of family physicians to the public health workforce in the United States and around the world,” said Corriveau. “Family medicine and public health are natural partners, and even overlap at times. In the last three years that have included the COVID-19 pandemic, we have witnessed incredible interest in public health and prevention, though this work has never been more challenging. We have our work cut out for us, and family physicians who are committed to improving the public’s health are a vital part of the solution.”