People in the News -- December

Family physician Regina Benjamin, M.D., M.B.A., of Bayou La Batre, Ala., is a 2008 recipient of a $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship.

Benjamin is the founder and CEO of the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic, which is located in a Gulf Coast fishing village of about 2,500 residents. The clinic was twice devastated by hurricanes -- Georges in 1998 and Katrina in 2005. Benjamin rebuilt her clinic after each disaster and set up networks to maintain contact with patients scattered across many evacuation sites.

Benjamin has received numerous honors for her work in advancing primary care and her advocacy on issues affecting the medically underserved, including the 1998 Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights. A former member of the AMA Board of Trustees, she currently chairs the AMA Council on ethical and Judicial Affairs.

The MacArthur Fellows Program of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awards the unrestricted fellowship grants to individuals who demonstrate exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances and the potential to use the grant for further creative work.

Stephen Spann, M.D., of Houston, has been named senior vice president and dean for clinical affairs at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston. He previously was professor and chair of family and community medicine at the college.

According to a Nov. 19 news release, Spann will oversee the college's clinical departments and centers and strengthen its focus on patient-centered care. He also will work with the leadership of the college's affiliated teaching hospitals and advance clinical outreach programs in the community.

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has appointed AAFP members Robert Moser, M.D., of Tribune, Kan., and Linda Warren, M.D., of Hanover, Kan., to the Kansas Physician Workforce and Accreditation Task Force.

The task force, which is charged with studying and adopting recommendations on accreditation issues and the physician workforce in Kansas, is to report its findings before the beginning of the 2009 session of the Kansas Legislature.

Family physician Peter Carek, M.D., of Mount Pleasant, S.C., has been selected to receive the Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Award from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, or ACGME.

Carek, director of the Trident Family Medicine Residency Program at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, is one of 10 outstanding program directors in the United States to receive the award. All 10 will be honored at the 2009 ACGME Annual Educational Conference in March.