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UMass Medical School-Baystate faculty leader Amy S. Gottlieb, MD, has been named the recipient of the 2020 Elnora Rhodes Service Award by the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM). The award recognizes the highest level of service to the society and is given annually to an individual for outstanding service in upholding its mission of clinical care, research, education and community service in primary care internal medicine.
“I am honored and deeply moved by this award,” said Dr. Gottlieb, professor of medicine and associate dean for faculty affairs at Baystate. “The Society of General Internal Medicine has been a professional home for me for almost two decades. It is a wonderful community of colleagues who have been a tremendous source of inspiration and camaraderie.”
A member of SGIM since 2005, Gottlieb, who is nationally recognized for her work on gender equity in academic medicine, was elected to become a member of the SGIM Women and Medicine Commission in 2008. She served as co-chair from 2013 to 2015 and chair from 2015 to 2017.
“During her tenure as commission co-chair, she conceptualized, championed, proposed, created and implemented the SGIM-Career Advising Program, a nationally recognized sponsorship program within SGIM. Her work on behalf of the Women and Medicine Commission has shown that women are much less likely than men to be sponsored in academic medicine, which contributes to inequities in compensation and in advancement,” wrote Gottlieb’s nominators. “To promote gender equity among general internal medicine faculty, she proposed and gained support to develop and launch the Career Advising Program (CAP) in 2012.”
CAP pairs junior women faculty with senior society members in a two-year longitudinal relationship centered on career advancement focused on curriculum vitae preparation, high-impact committee membership and strategies for building professional networks in academic medicine. The first program of its kind nationally, CAP has enrolled more than 300 SGIM members since its inception. Medical associations nationwide, including the American College of Physicians and the Association of American Medical Colleges, have adopted the CAP strategy to improve gender equity in medicine.
Gottlieb is a member of the Association of American Medical Colleges Group on Women in Medicine and Science Steering Committee and is editing a book on how organizations can narrow the gender pay gap in medicine. She has been honored by the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, the Women and Infants Hospital, and the Women’s Center of Rhode Island for outstanding leadership, innovation, and excellence in medical education and women’s health.
“I would encourage advocacy around changes in policies and practices that inadvertently benefit men and disadvantage women in the workplace and also recommend paying attention at an individual level to any situation in which gender biases could emerge, like introductions at grand rounds or in performance evaluations,” she said. “I hope for a professional culture in academic medicine that one day allows for equality of opportunity and harnesses the talents of everyone.”
