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In This Issue:
Jennifer Leaning, MD, SMH, routinely ventures to parts of the world deemed unsafe even for armed soldiers of the U.S. military. Her fieldwork, analyses and findings have helped expose human rights abuses and affect change in Israel and the Occupied Territories, Soviet Georgia, Mogadishu, Rwanda, Afghanistan and Darfur. And she has been asked to join working sessions of the UN Global Commission on Human Security.
“She has done all this with a grace and humility that belie her extraordinary accomplishments,” Ron Walls, MD, chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine, said last week as he presented Leaning with the 2005 Hippocrates Society Humanitarian award. “Jennifer's commitment and dedication, both locally and internationally, embody the very values that this award recognizes,” he added during the society's annual dinner at the Museum of Fine Arts.
The Hippocrates Society was founded in 2002 to recognize BWH medical staff who have made significant philanthropic donations to the hospital. With 56 members, the Society acknowledges physicians for their philanthropy and annually bestows its humanitarian award to physicians whose contributions enrich the world and improve the lives of others.
Leaning has been an attending physician in Emergency Medicine since 1986, and she is a founding member and board member of Physicians for Human Rights. Also, she is an assistant professor of Medicine at HMS and a professor of International Health at Harvard School of Public Health. She serves as director of the Program of Humanitarian Crises and Human Rights at the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center at HSPH.
Leaning said she was “deeply moved and honored” to receive this high honor. “It's very significant to me that it is an acknowledgement from my peers and mentors and that the work I've done is important to them,” said Leaning, who joins the ranks of past recipients, including John Byrne, Bruce Levy, Paul Farmer and Lynn Peterson.