Davis receives 2011 Humanitarian Award

Jennifer Leaning presents the Humanitarian Award to Mark Davis.

Described as “a gentle, persistent innovator,” Mark A. Davis, MD, MS, was honored in November with the 2011 Humanitarian Award. The annual award is the highest honor bestowed by the Brigham and Women’s and Faulkner Hospitals’ Hippocrates Society, and it celebrates BW/F physicians and scientists whose outstanding contributions enrich local and global communities, improve the lives of others or enhance the patient and physician experience at our hospitals.

As the founding director of the Institute for International Emergency Medicine and Health (IEMH) at BWH and Harvard Medical School, Davis has helped to establish high quality and sustainable emergency medical training in the Middle East, frontline health care capacity development in Africa and trauma training in Romania.

Inspired by Francis Adams, the 19th century surgeon and translator of Hippocrates, Davis said he is driven to “question accepted fundamental truths every day.” Noting that war is an enormous public health issue, Davis highlighted the important role that physicians play in making peace, observing that “armed conflict is more similar to polio than it is to a hurricane.” He challenged the BW/F community to “use our remarkable platform to change the world…If not us, who? And if not now, when?”

Davis has been an attending physician in Emergency Medicine since 2000. He is an associate professor of medicine at HMS, and a faculty scholar in Native Health at the Native American Health Program.

The November event was the tenth annual gathering of the BW/F Hippocrates Society, which recognizes BW/F staff who have made significant philanthropic contributions to the hospitals. With more than 175 members, the Hippocrates Society seeks to expand its membership as the BW/F community prepares for centennial celebrations beginning in 2012.

With this award, Davis joins the ranks of past recipients: Drs. Thomas Thornhill, Heidi Louise Behforouz, Michael VanRooyen, Manuel Guillermo Herrera, Jim Yong Kim, Jennifer Leaning, Paul Farmer, Lynn Peterson, John Byrne, and Bruce Levy.

Read more about the Hippocrates Society.