V37 N2 / 2022 

©2022 American Medical Writers Association. All rights reserved.  
ISSN 2163-5315

AMWAJournal.org     46

The Walter C. Alvarez Award is named in honor of Walter 

C. Alvarez, MD, a pioneer in the field of medical communi-

cation. The award is presented to either a member or non-

member of AMWA to honor excellence in communicating 

health care developments and concepts to the public. The 

Alvarez Award is presented during AMWA's Medical Writing 

& Communication Conference.

The 2022 Walter C. Alvarez Award is presented to Dr Leana 

Wen in honor of her many contributions in health com-

munication, including regular columns in the Washington 

Post, the patient advocacy book When Doctors Don’t Listen: 

How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests, and the 

memoir of her career in public health, Lifelines: A Doctor’s 

Journey in the Fight for Public Health. She has also authored 

dozens of articles in scientific publications including Health 

Affairs, Lancet, PLoS Medicine, and the American Journal of 

Public Health.

 During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr Wen served as a 

CNN medical analyst and anchored a new Washington 

Post newsletter “The Checkup with Dr Wen” to provide 

help on navigating this and other public health challenges. 

As a consistent voice for using scientific evidence to guide 

policy decisions, these columns have aided many in under-

standing the numerous changes to guidelines and require-

ments. She brought this expertise to Congress in June 

2020, testifying in front of the in front of the US House of 

Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus 

Crisis on racial disparities and COVID-19.

 Dr Wen’s career has focused on public health as a fun-

damental force in our individual lives and well-being. 

Previously, she served as Baltimore's Health Commissioner, 

where she led the nation’s oldest continuously operating 

health department in the United States to fight the opioid 

epidemic, treat violence and racism as public health issues, 

and improve maternal and child health. She directed the 

public health recovery efforts of Baltimore after the 2015 

riots, working to ensure 

access to prescription 

medication after phar-

macy closures and 

working to develop the 

city’s mental health and 

trauma recovery plan 

with crisis counseling, 

youth health and well-

ness, and violence pre-

vention programs. As 

she states in Lifelines, 

“Public health saved 

your life today—you 

just don’t know it.”

 As an expert on 

patient advocacy and patient-centered care, Dr Wen has 

long encouraged transparency in medicine. She began 

this work during in medical school, serving as the national 

president of the American Medical Student Association 

and leading campaigns to decrease health disparities and 

combat conflicts of interest between physicians and phar-

maceutical companies. She has campaigned for voluntary 

disclosure of such conflicts of interest, and her TED talk on 

this topic has been viewed over 2 million times.

 Dr Wen obtained her medical degree from Washington 

University School of Medicine and studied health policy at 

the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. 

She completed her residency training at Brigham and 

Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, 

where she was a clinical fellow at Harvard Medical School.

 Dr Wen currently works as an emergency physician, 

professor of health policy and management at George 

Washington University, and a nonresident senior fellow at 

the Brookings Institution. She lives with her husband and 

their 2 young children in Baltimore.

Kimberly Korwek, PhD  /  Chair, Annual Conference Program Committee

2022 Walter C. Alvarez Award Recipient: Dr Leana Wen

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