2023 JOSEPH W. ST. GEME, JR. LEADERSHIP AWARD RECIPIENT ANNOUNCED
McLean, VA – Pediatrician Dr. Elena Fuentes-Afflick is the 2023 Joseph W. St. Geme, Jr. Leadership Award recipient. Dr. Fuentes-Afflick is a leader with an impressive record of sustained contributions that have advanced child health and the profession of pediatrics. Beyond the general impact that she has had on child health and the future of pediatrics, she has had impact in the areas of health equity, diversity and inclusion, women in medicine, and promotion of pediatric research.
Dr. Fuentes-Afflick attended medical school at the University of Michigan, graduating with Distinction and earning election to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society. She completed residency training and a chief residency in pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She pursued fellowship training in health policy at UCSF after obtaining a Master of Public Health degree at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1993 she joined the faculty at UCSF, where she has remained ever since. In addition to her faculty role, she served as Chief of Pediatrics at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Vice Chair for the Department of Pediatrics at UCSF from 2009-2022, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and Faculty Development at UCSF School of Medicine from 2012-2022, and became Vice Dean for Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital in 2022.
Dr. Fuentes-Afflick has played a major leadership role in multiple organizations in the Federation of Pediatric Organizations (FOPO), including the Society for Pediatric Research (SPR), the American Pediatric Society (APS), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP), and the Academic Pediatric Association (APA). With the SPR, she has served as a member of the Student Research Committee, the Clinical and Basic Science Fellow Awards Committee, the Doug Richardson Award Committee, the Young Investigator Award Committee, the Nominating Committee, the Mentoring Committee, the Strategic Planning Committee, and the SPR Council and as Vice President, President-Elect, President, and Past President. With the APS, she has served as the founding chair of the Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, as a member of the Membership Selection Committee, the Bylaws Committee, the National Child and Maternal Health Education Program Committee, the Leadership in Academic Pediatrics Committee, the Career Support Committee, the Nominating Committee, the Strategic Planning Committee, and the APS Council and as Vice President, President, and Past President. With the AAP, she has served as a member of the Committee on the Pediatric Workforce, the Committee on Membership, the Committee on Research, and the Task Force on the Vision of Pediatrics. With the ABP, she has served as a member of the Residency Review and Redesign Project, the New Subspecialties Committee, and the Research Advisory Committee. With the APA, she has served as a member of the Nominating Committee, the Young Investigator Award Committee, the Task Force on Child Poverty, and as a member of the National Advisory Council for APA-RAPID. In considering this record of participation and leadership in the SPR, APS, AAP, ABP, and APA, it is clear that she is an individual who has had tremendous impact on the pediatric community and the future of pediatrics.
Beyond her vast contributions to organizations in FOPO, Dr. Fuentes-Afflick has also served as a member of the National Advisory Committee for the Reach Out and Read Program, the Council of the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, the Board of Directors for the Foundation for Child Development, and the Hispanic Advisory Council for the March of Dimes, influencing the future of pediatrics through all these organizations.
In addition to her involvement with organizations focused specifically on pediatrics and child health, she has devoted enormous time and effort to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Program, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Association of American Medical Colleges, bringing a pediatric lens to these organizations. Following her election to NAM in 2010, she has been extremely active in this organization, with particular attention to child health. She has served on multiple NAM committees, including the Committee on the Assessment of Studies of Health Outcomes Related to the Recommended Childhood Immunization Schedule, the Committee on Supporting the Parents of Young Children, and the Committee on Understanding and Addressing the Underrepresentation of Women in Particular Science and Engineering Disciplines.She is currently serving on the NAM committee that is studying the Pediatric Subspecialty Workforce and Its Impact on Child Health and Well-Being.
For more than 25 years, Dr. Fuentes-Afflick has pursued research in perinatal epidemiology, with a concentration on health disparities and the impact of acculturation in perinatal outcomes, reflecting her background as a bicultural, bilingual Latina physician and investigator. She has also studied health disparities related to other health outcomes, including adult health outcomes. Upon assuming responsibilities as Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and Faculty Development, she expanded her scholarship to include issues such as professionalism, misconduct, and sexual harassment. She has made important contributions in all these areas, serving as a thought leader and producing over 100 publications.
As a leader in pediatrics, Dr. Fuentes-Afflick has been involved in many efforts to promote diversity and inclusion across the academic community in pediatrics and in academic medicine more broadly. As a faculty leader at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, she has made a concerted effort to recruit and support a diverse group of faculty and staff. As a result of these efforts, over 20% of the pediatric faculty at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital are underrepresented in medicine. She has served as a consultant and advisor for numerous other academic institutions that seek to implement measures to improve diversity and inclusion among their faculty and staff.
As a widely recognized expert in health disparities, Dr. Fuentes-Afflick has collaborated with pediatric colleagues at multiple institutions to develop rigorous organizational strategies to address health disparities and to promote equitable child health. In collaboration with colleagues at UCSF and other institutions, in 2021 she co-authored a commentary that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, “Race and Genetic Ancestry in Medicine – A Time for Reckoning with Racism.” In response to a request from the New England Journal of Medicine to prepare an article for their Fundamentals of Public Health series with a focus on children, in 2021 she published a paper entitled “Applying a Subpopulation Lens to Population Health.” As part of the National Academy of Medicine’s 50th anniversary celebration, she was asked to lead a working group of leaders in maternal and child health to develop recommendations for the new presidential administration, resulting in a publication in Health Affairs entitled “Optimizing Health and Well-being for Women and Children.”
Dr. Fuentes-Afflick has been actively involved in mentoring throughout her career. She mentors every pediatric faculty member at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, other faculty members at UCSF, and numerous faculty at other institutions. She has acquired new mentoring relationships through “Meet the Professor” sessions at the Pediatric Academic Societies Annual Meeting and the APA Research in Academic Pediatrics Initiative on Diversity (RAPID) program, which focuses on underrepresented junior faculty members. In her role as co-chair of the APS Career Support Committee, she promoted mentoring for pediatric leaders. Since first participating in ELAM activities in 2016, she has served as a mentor for 22 ELAM participants and as a Learning Community Advisor for 11 ELAM participants, staggering numbers that underscore her impressive influence on the development of women leaders in medicine.
Throughout her time as a faculty member, Dr. Fuentes-Afflick has maintained her clinical activities in pediatric primary care and the pediatric asthma clinic at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. For thirty-five years she had a primary care practice that includes a large group of high-risk children with special healthcare needs, nearly all Latino children or children in immigrant families.
In summary, Dr. Fuentes-Afflick has had a profound impact on child health over the course of her career and has created a future for pediatrics through sustained personal, institutional, and national initiatives. She has participated in strategic planning efforts for SPR, APS, AAP, and Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs (AMSPDC); assisted with local and national efforts to promote diversity and equity; implemented plans at institutions across the country to address health disparities; and provided mentoring to individuals at UCSF and throughout the US, resulting in increased career opportunities for women and underrepresented minorities in medicine. Her contributions as a leader in the pediatric community have been unrivaled; and she is a role model for others to emulate.
