Dr. Andrew I. Schafer will receive the Robert H. Williams, M.D., Distinguished Professor Award, the highest honor of the Association of Professors of Medicine (APM), during the association's winter meeting in late February.
The award acknowledges outstanding leadership by a chair of a department of internal medicine at a medical school and is considered the most prestigious prize in the field of academic internal medicine. The nominating committee noted that Dr. Schafer, the E. Hugh Luckey Distinguished Professor of Medicine and chair of the Department of Medicine at the Medical College, "is the single department chair who has had the most significant impact on academic internal medicine over the past two decades."
Dr. Andrew Schafer
Since joining Weill Cornell Medical College and NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell in 2007, Dr. Schafer has furthered a strategic vision for the Department of Medicine, including a number of transformative programs encompassing all divisions within the department. Editor of the book "The Vanishing Physician-Scientist?" — which details the many challenges physician-scientists face today — Dr. Schafer has pursued solutions to create a supportive academic environment for the young physician-scientist.
As part of this overarching goal, the APM is acknowledging his outstanding service in the "development and leadership of the APM Physician-Scientist Initiative," an initiative that resulted in a collaborative effort with 13 NIH agencies. The effort has led to a set of recommendations titled "Revitalization of the Nation's Physician-Scientist Workforce."
"Entering the 21st century," Dr. Schafer says, "the extraordinary pace of discovery in biomedical sciences and the rapid technological advances in clinical practice have created a widening knowledge gap — even language barrier — between practicing physicians and laboratory scientists. It is important to understand the other contemporary factors — demographic, sociologic and economic — that have increasingly discouraged physicians from entering research careers."
Before joining Weill Cornell, Dr. Schafer was the Frank Wister Thomas Professor and chair for the Department of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (2002–2007) and the Bob and Vivian Smith Professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine (1988–2002). A member of the APM since 1997, he has been actively involved in the association, serving as its president in 2011.
Dr. Schafer earned his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and completed his internal medicine residency at the University of Chicago Hospitals and Clinics. He went on to complete his fellowship in hematology at Harvard Medical School Brigham and Women's Hospital.