The ACGME Annual Educational Conference provides a venue every year for the graduate medical education (GME) community to come together from all over the United States and the world. Attendees show up eager to network, hear from leaders in the field, collaborate, engage in important and invigorating discussions, and ponder new ideas. There’s electricity in the air – the community is happy to be there, to meet new friends, and to reconnect with colleagues from past roles, medical school, residency, and more.
The conference is also a celebration, and one of the elements that makes the conference so celebratory is the opportunity to recognize and honor the recipients of prestigious national and international awards.
The Awards
As of 2024, the ACGME presents annual awards in seven categories:
- The John C. Gienapp Award (recognizing an individual whose career has been dedicated to GME)
- The Barbara Ross-Lee, DO Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award (recognizing Sponsoring Institutions, programs, and specialty organizations)
- The David C. Leach Award (recognizing resident/fellow projects that foster residency improvement and innovation)
- The Debra L. Dooley GME Program Coordinator Excellence Award (recognizing program coordinators)
- The GME Institutional Coordinator Excellence Award (recognizing institutional coordinators)
- The Lewis Blackman Patient Safety Award (recognizing resident/fellow projects that improve or foster patient safety; 2024’s honorees are receiving the inaugural awards in this category)
- The Parker J. Palmer Courage to Lead Award (recognizing designated institutional officials)
- The Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Award (recognizing program directors)
The 2024 recipients of these ACGME Awards were announced this fall.
The ACGME jointly presents two additional awards:
- The Dewitt C. Baldwin Jr. Award, with the Arnold P. Gold Foundation (Note: the Baldwin Award will not be presented in 2024.)
- The Jeremiah A. Barondess Fellowship in the Clinical Transaction, with the New York Academy of Medicine (Note: the 2024 Barondess Fellow will be selected in January 2024.)
ACGME International (ACGME-I) presents awards in three categories each year:
- Physician Leader
- Physician Educator
- Staff
The 2024 recipients of the ACGME-I Awards were also announced earlier this fall.
Recognizing the Honorees
ACGME Awards nominations for a given year are typically solicited in the first quarter of the year previous to the award year (e.g., the nomination period for the 2024 awardees was open in January-March 2023). The Awards Committee of the ACGME Board of Directors carefully reviews and considers all nominations, and then presents its proposed slate of winners to the ACGME Board for approval in September. The Awards Committee of the ACGME-I Board of Directors follows a similar process: nominations are accepted in second quarter of the year previous to the award year, and the proposed slate of winners is presented to the full Board for approval each fall.
Once the slates are approved, selected awardees are notified and a months-long promotion period, culminating with the formal awards presentation at the following year’s Annual Educational Conference, begins. Promotions include a press release on the news wire and in the ACGME and ACGME-I Newsrooms, notifications to winners’ programs/institutions, and announcements of the awardees on the ACGME’s and ACGME-I’s social media accounts. The ACGME also interviews each winner for a Q and A post on the ACGME Blog in the two months before the conference.
At the Conference
Awardees are acknowledged in multiple ways at the conference. Badge ribbons for both current and past award winners are provided so that attendees can easily recognize and congratulate these special honorees as they learn, network, and engage together during the three-day event. Awardees attend an invitation-only educational session designed to build community among past and present awardees and facilitate sharing of best practices. And then there’s the main event: the Awards Dinner. At this special private event for awardees and their invited guests, individual awardees are recognized in a ceremony highlighting their exceptional achievements. The ACGME also acknowledges the current year’s honorees in front of all conference attendees at the Welcome presentation before the President’s Plenary on Friday morning.
Get Involved
Whether you are just learning about the awards programs or you just haven’t gotten involved yet, we hope you’ll dig in a bit more and consider nominating colleagues in the future. As both the ACGME’s and ACGME-I’s awards programs have grown, the organizations take great pride in their responsibility to honor those who dedicate their life’s work to meeting the great mission of improving health care and population health by preparing the next generation of physicians to care for the health of the public.
Follow us on social media, on this Blog, and on the ACGME-I website to learn more about this year’s exceptional honorees. Remember, too, to keep an eye out for announcements about nominations for 2025! And, of course, we hope you will register for the 2024 ACGME Annual Educational Conference in Orlando, Florida and join us as we celebrate the truly exceptional honorees who are the 2024 ACGME and ACGME International Award winners.