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Elise Eller / 2020-2021 Director-At-Large and Chair and 
Board Liaison, Member Awards Committee

The Harold Swanberg Distinguished Service Award, named in honor of one of the  

founders of AMWA, is presented to an active AMWA member who has made  

distinguished contributions to medical communication or rendered unusual and  

distinguished services to the medical profession.

This year’s Swanberg recipient is Lori L. Alexander, MTPW, ELS, MWC. Lori has made  

distinguished contributions to the medical communication profession for more than  

30 years, most recently in the area of education of medical communicators. 

 Lori is an advocate for professional development and lifelong learning. Lori’s work 

history in medical communication has spanned a variety of settings, providing experi-

ence in different types of medical communication. Her work has involved editing, writ-

ing, project management, and development of educational resources for health care 

professionals and the lay public.

 Lori’s contributions to the field of medical communication span service both within 

and outside of AMWA. Highlights of Lori’s service to AMWA include serving as editor of 

the AMWA Journal, chairing the Annual Conference Programming Committee (twice) 

and the Education Committee, serving on several working groups and task forces,  

serving as AMWA President and on the AMWA Board of Directors, and, most recently, 

serving as AMWA Director of Education. In these roles, Lori has explored and deter-

mined members’ educational needs and preferences, helped AMWA create educational 

activities and resources to fit those needs, developed processes that ensure the consis-

tent high quality of AMWA’s educational products, and thought and acted strategically 

to help AMWA achieve its goals. It is because of Lori that AMWA has a content strat-

egy for developing educational offerings online and at the annual Medical Writing & 

Communication Conference. It is also because of Lori that AMWA is now offering new 

workshops and the new Knowledge Builders in the AMWA catalog.

 Lori also helped establish and develop a Medical Writing and Editing Certificate 

Program, which focuses on regulatory writing, journal publications, continuing educa-

tion, and grant writing, for the University of California San Diego Extension. Until her 

retirement, Lori continued to serve as the consulting director and lead faculty to provide 

strategic direction for the program.

 Lori’s long-standing service demonstrates her passion for promoting excellence in 

medical communication. AMWA is proud to recognize Lori as the  recipient of the 2021 

Harold Swanberg Distinguished Service Award.

Sadly for the AMWA community and all who knew her, Lori passed away on June 4, 2021. 

We will miss Lori's energy and sense of humor, and our thoughts go out to Lori's wife,  

Deb Whippen, and to her family and friends.

Harold Swanberg Distinguished 
Service Award

AMWA Journal / V36 N2 / 2021 / amwa.org    95



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The John P. McGovern Award is named in honor of John P. 

McGovern and is presented to a member or nonmember of the 

American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) to recognize a 

preeminent contribution to any of the various modes of medical 

communication. The McGovern Award is presented during the 

annual AMWA Medical Writing & Communication Conference.

I am pleased to announce this year’s John P. McGovern Award 

recipient: Stacy L. Christiansen, MA. Ms Christiansen’s con-

tribution to the field of medical communication is crystal 

clear to so many members of AMWA, as she is the manag-

ing editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association 

(JAMA) and chair of the American Medical Association (AMA) 

Manual of Style committee. In the words of her colleagues 

who nominated her, “Ms Christiansen’s numerous, important 

contributions to multiple modes of medical communication 

embody all that the John P. McGovern Award represents—

leadership, excellence in medical writing and editing, 

and benevolent mentoring of editors, manuscript editors, 

authors, and writers.”

 Ms Christiansen received a Bachelor of Arts and Master 

of Arts in English language and literature from Northern 

Illinois University. She has worked for JAMA since 1998 and 

has worked as the managing editor since 2013. Many AMWA 

members also know her through her active membership 

and engagement in the Council of Science Editors (CSE); 

Ms Christiansen serves as a faculty member for the CSE 

Short Course for Manuscript Editors. She has taught in the 

University of Chicago Medical Writing and Editing Program.

 As Managing Editor of JAMA, Ms Christiansen regu-

larly communicates with JAMA authors and representatives 

of international professional societies and agencies from 

around the world to provide advice about communicating 

research results and medical information and often resolves 

complicated editorial and policy issues with authors. Her col-

leagues cite her recent challenge of navigating more than 

10,000 coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)–related submis-

sions to the journal, for which she subsequently led efficient 

and excellent editing and 

publication of more than 

300 COVID-19–related 

articles to inform clini-

cians, policy makers, and 

the public.

 The AMA Manual 

of Style was first pub-

lished in 1962.1 As Chair 

of the AMA Manual of 

Style committee, Ms 

Christiansen was responsible for leading the major revision 

and publication of the 11th edition, published in 2020. She 

continues to guide the committee to address ongoing issues 

in medical writing and editing, as well as changes in usage 

that parallel the constantly changing ways we communicate. 

For example, during 2020, she led efforts to modify guidance 

for the reporting of race and ethnicity in medical publica-

tions and developed usage nomenclature for terms related to 

the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-

CoV-2) and COVID-19.

 The McGovern Award recipient is not required to be a 

member of AMWA. However, not only is Ms Christiansen 

an active member, but she has also presented at many con-

ferences, written articles for AMWA Journal, and regularly 

connects with AMWA members on Twitter—as the resident 

tweeter for the AMA Manual of Style. On behalf of our entire 

organization, it is a joy to congratulate Ms Christiansen on 

this prestigious award!

Author declaration and disclosures: The author notes no commercial 
associations that may pose a conflict of interest in relation to this 
article.

Author contact: conference@amwa.org

Reference
1. American Medical Association. AMA Manual of Style: a guide for 

authors and editors. Brief history of the AMA Manual of Style. Accessed 

April 25, 2021. https://www.amamanualofstyle.com/page/AMAhistory

Gail V. Flores, PhD / 2020-2021 AMWA President

2021 John P. McGovern Award Recipient: 
Stacy L. Christiansen, MA

96 AMWA Journal / V36 N2 / 2021 / amwa.org 

mailto:conference@amwa.org
https://www.amamanualofstyle.com/page/AMAhistory


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The Walter C. Alvarez Award, named in honor of an early medical communicator, is  

presented to an individual who is the epitome of excellence in communicating health  

care developments and concepts to the public. This year’s Alvarez Award winner is  

Ms Harriet Washington.

Harriet A. Washington is a science writer, editor, and ethicist who is the author of Carte 

Blanche: The Erosion of Informed Consent in Medical Research (2021, Columbia Global 

Reports) and A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the 

American Mind. She has been Writing Fellow in Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, the 

2015-2016 Miriam Shearing Fellow at the University of Nevada’s Black Mountain Institute, 

a Research Fellow in Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School, Visiting Fellow at the 

Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, a visiting scholar at DePaul University College 

of Law, and a senior research scholar at the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskegee 

University. She has also held fellowships at Stanford University and teaches bioethics at 

Columbia University, where she delivered the 2020 commencement speech to Columbia’s 

School of Public Health graduates, and won the 2020 Mailman School of Public Health’s 

Public Health Leadership Award, as well as the 2020-2021 Kenneth and Mamie Clark 

Distinguished Lecture Award. In 2016, she was elected a Fellow of the New York Academy 

of Medicine. 

 Her work helped provide the basis for the AMA apology to the nation’s black physi-

cians in 2008 and led to the banishment of the James Marion Sims statue from Central 

Park in 2018.

 Ms Washington has written widely for popular and science publications and has been 

published in referenced books and journals such as Nature, JAMA, The American Journal 

of Public Health, The New England Journal of Medicine, the Harvard Public Health Review, 

Isis, and The Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics. She has been Editor of the Harvard 

Journal of Minority Public Health, has been a guest Editor of the Journal of Law, Medicine 

and Ethics, and is a reviewer for the Journal of the American Association of Bioethics and 

the Humanities. Her other books include Infectious Madness: The Surprising Science of 

How We "Catch" Mental Illness, Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of 

Life Itself, and Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Experimentation from Colonial 

Times to the Present, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Oakland 

Award, and the American Library Association Black Caucus Nonfiction Award. 

 A film buff and lover of baroque music, Ms Washington has also worked as manager 

of a poison-control center and as a classical-music announcer for public radio station 

WXXI-FM in Rochester, New York, and she curates a medical-film series.

 
Author declaration and disclosures: The author notes no commercial associations that may pose a 

conflict of interest in relation to this article.

Author contact: conference@amwa.org

Sarah Dobney, MPH  / AMWA Annual Conference Chair, Galion, OH

2021 Walter C. Alvarez Award Recipient:  
Harriet Washington 

      AMWA Journal / V36 N2 / 2021 / amwa.org    97




