14 minute read
PCMS Installation and Awards Kenneth M. Certa, MD Jose Medina, MD, MSW William F. King, Jr., MD, FAAP Linton A. Whitaker, MD, FACS
FEATURE Congratulations
PCMS Installation and Awards
Date: Friday, June 17th, 2022 Philadelphia County Medical Society Announces Cristol Award Recipient: Kenneth M. Certa, MD
Kenneth M. Certa, MD, DLFAPA, was born and raised in Norristown, Pennsylvania, Montgomery County, and was the first member of his family to pursue a career in medicine. He completed the accelerated premedical/ medical program operated jointly by the Pennsylvania State University and Jefferson Medical College, now the Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. He completed residency training in psychiatry at Jefferson as well and has been on the faculty there since 1985.
Dr. Certa is currently the Director of Adult Acute Psychiatric Services at Jefferson. He has worked clinically in emergency room psychiatry consultation, inpatient psychiatric care, and general hospital psychiatry consultation. He also served as the Residency Program Director at Jefferson for fourteen years.
It has been through his work in emergency psychiatry that led to his involvement in organized medicine and advocacy. Many individuals with serious mental illness were at risk of catastrophic outcomes due to a lack of available resources, uneven training of emergency medical and law enforcement personnel, and conflicting interpretations of laws governing mental health commitment.
Dr. Certa has served on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia County Medical Society; the Executive Council and President of the Philadelphia Psychiatric Society, and later President of the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society. He has also served as a Delegate to the Pennsylvania Medical Society, House of Delegates for many years.
At the time of the reorganization of the Pennsylvania Medical Society Board, Dr. Certa advocated successfully for a slotted seat for psychiatry on the board. There is no health without mental health, and the House of Delegates agreed that the presence of psychiatry on the PAMED board would help inform the actions of the medical society, especially concerning advocacy. He served as the first Psychiatry Trustee for ten years.
During his tenure on the PAMED board, the American Medical Association also changed the representation of specialty societies in its House of Delegates. Due to the importance of Pennsylvania to the AMA mission, Dr. Certa was named to the delegation from the American Psychiatric
Association to the AMA House of Delegates. He has served there for the past twenty years and is currently the Senior Delegate from the APA to the AMA HOD. In the AMA HOD, he is proud to have worked with the Pennsylvania delegation to have AMA support the house staff who were left without liability tail protection when Hahnemann closed; this support was instrumental in securing coverage from the Hahnemann owners.
Education of residents and medical students has driven his career, as well as care for individuals with serious mental illness and potential for suicide. His academic works have included many presentations at national meetings on the evaluation of suicidality, self-injury behavior, and altered mental status, as well as scholarly articles on inpatient hospital care.
Dr. Certa has chaired or co-chaired the Government Relations Committee of the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society for over twenty years, and has drafted letters and testified on numerous issues concerning behavioral health. Complex issues involve the standards for involuntary psychiatric commitment, reporting of committed individuals to the state police and national database for background checks, efforts to limit access to guns by individuals who pose a risk for harm to self or others, and improving access to mental health care, increasing the size and diversity of the psychiatric workforce, and safeguarding privacy while providing clinicians with important aspects of mental health history.
Dr. Certa served in the Assembly of the American Psychiatric Association representing Pennsylvania, and was elected to the Board of the APA; his term recently ended.
Dr. Certa has had tremendous support in his work from his wife, Dr. Marie Robb, a radiologist at Lehigh Valley Hospital Center, and the rest of his family. His son Zachary is an emergency medicine physician at Kaiser Permanente in Walnut Creek, California. His older daughter Elizabeth works in IT, querying websites for accessibility for those with disabilities, and his younger son Anthony supports health IT, having initially worked for Cerner. His younger daughter Olivia is completing a master’s program in medical physics at the University of Pennsylvania.
He looks forward to continuing to being active in organized medicine; working to fight against gun violence; assuring parity of access and reimbursement for behavioral health care; educating future physicians about clinical psychiatry; and helping to strengthen our communities, as we struggle to emerge from the pandemic.
Congratulations Dr. Certa and Thank You for your dedication
and activism! continued on next page PHILAMEDSOC.ORG
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Date: Friday, June 17th, 2022 Philadelphia County Medical Society Announces Vanitha Appadorai Vaidya, MD, Award for Humaneness in Medicine Recipient: Jose Medina, MD, MSW
The Vanitha Appadorai Vaidya, MD, Award for Humaneness in Medicine honors the memory of the devoted and loving wife of our past President, Shailendra Vaidya, MD.
The purpose of this Award is to commend humaneness demonstrated by a Resident Physician member of PCMS. This humaneness is characterized by particular skills in working with people, patients, and their families, and understanding human as well as clinical needs, especially in the kindness of treatment.
Jose Medina, MD, MSW, is completing his third year of Residency in Family Medicine at Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.
Dr. Medina is originally from sunny Miami, Florida, but has slowly been making his way up the East Coast. His first stop was Baltimore, Maryland where he attended Johns Hopkins University and studied Public Health. After graduation he was unsure regarding what he wanted to do, and found himself back in the tropics, teaching science in Guyana, where he was taken aback by the generosity of the community he lived within, and shocked by the lack of formal social support available to struggling families. The experience led him back up north to Philadelphia to pursue a Masters in Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania and to better understand how to navigate social and healthcare safety nets.
After attending school in social work, Dr. Medina worked throughout West Philadelphia alongside community health workers, keeping patients in their homes, and out of the hospital. Working closely with many family physicians in this role, and seeing their impact on patients and the community, he decided to head off to Rutgers New Jersey Medical
School; family medicine was an easy choice for him, as he felt it was an area of medicine that shares many core tenets of social work, and where he could form lasting relationships with patients.
Dr. Medina was thrilled to return to Philadelphia, to complete his family medicine training at Jefferson, where he has been dedicated to underserved communities of all types throughout the city, and focused on seeking opportunities for residents to get involved outside of the typical clinic and hospital settings. He has been a committed preceptor to the JeffHope Clinics, Jefferson’s network of student-run free clinics, servicing several area homeless shelters. Dr. Medina will remain at Jefferson as a Hospitalist and currently serves as a faculty advisor to the JeffHope clinics.
When not working, Dr. Medina enjoys spending time exploring Philly with his wife, Ellina (a neurosurgery resident), and their fur-children Macy and Snoopy.
Congratulations Dr. Medina! We Thank You for your very special care
and humanistic touch in medicine! • continued on next page
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Date: Friday, June 17th, 2022 Philadelphia County Medical Society Announces Practitioner of the Year Award Recipient: William F. King, Jr., MD, FAAP
PCMS presents the annual Practitioner of the Year Award to a physician who has been nominated for dedication to the medical profession in the areas of quality patient care and community service. The award is supported by the Wiener Fund established by the late Jacob S. Wiener, MD, a past member of PCMS.
William F. King, Jr. MD, FAAP, has been a general pediatrician in private practice for more than 25 years, at Pediatric and Adolescent Medical Centers of Philadelphia (PAMCOP.com), an African-American owned practice. Dr. King was the Chief of the section of Community Pediatrics for six years at Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University. In addition, Dr. King served as an Ensign in the National Health Service Corps branch of the US Public Health Service.
Dr. King received his MD from Yale School of Medicine at Yale University; he completed his internship and residency at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Additionally, Dr. King is an alumnus of Stanford University where he trained and worked in their molecular biology labs; the National Institutes of Health, and Duke University.
Dr. King’s professional interests are in community-based pediatric practice and parent education. His research interests have been in youth violence reduction, childhood malnutrition, and medical student outreach. He was a decade-long board member of Physicians for Social Responsibility, where he helped coordinate the Legs Against Arms 5K, supporting gun violence reduction, and the Soul of Medicine brunch, an annual event with the 5 campuses of Philadelphia medical students, sustaining the souls and healing spirit of new doctors.
Dr. King is currently the Vice President of the Medical Society of Eastern Pennsylvania, representing Philadelphia area Black physicians. His history with the National Medical Association extends back to medical school where he was a SNMA National Vice President. Dr. King also has a long history of participation on WURD radio’s Physicians-On-Air.
Dr. King is a deacon at White Rock Baptist Church in West Philadelphia, where he works actively with scouting as a merit badge counselor and cultivates the White Rock Children’s Garden. For the past decade, he has helped maintain a children’s garden with foster kids at Northern Children’s Services in Roxboro.
Dr. King continues to be involved in COVID-19 education, working with the AllFaithsVaccinationCampaign.org; the Philly Counts Coalition; City Government; school administrations and community organizations, to encourage and support vaccination as part of the “Back to School to Stay Campaign.” This work has extended to acting as the medical consultant on COVID-19 policies to the Chester-Upland School District through his public health consultancy business, CommonsenseDoctor.org.
Dr. King’s wife, Dr. Marina Barnett, is a Professor in the School of Social Work at Widener University; they have a talented high school student son and college graduate daughter who take up the rest of his attention.
PCMS is proud to honor, thank, and give recognition to Dr. King who has demonstrated the highest art of medicine and outstanding contributions to the Philadelphia community.
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FEATURE continued
Congratulations PCMS Installation and Awards continued
Dr. Adzick is the C. Everett Koop Professor of Pediatric Surgery at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Professor of Surgery, Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
Date: Friday, June 17th, 2022 Philadelphia County Medical Society Announces Strittmatter Award Recipient: Linton A. Whitaker, MD, FACS
The annual Strittmatter Award is the highest honor presented to a physician who has made the most valuable contribution to the healing arts. Established in 1923 by I. P. Strittmatter, MD, the award commends the recipient’s contribution to one of the fundamental sciences of medicine, having a beneficial influence on either surgery or medicine.
Dr. Whitaker is a graduate of the University of Texas (Austin) and received his MD from Tulane University School of Medicine. He completed his internship at the Montreal General Hospital (McGill), and completed a general surgery residency at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College. Additionally, Dr. Whitaker completed a plastic surgery residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania where he has been since 1969. There he served as Chief of Plastic Surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Dr. Whitaker, a pioneer in the field of Plastic Surgery, is internationally recognized for his innovations and expertise in craniofacial reconstruction and cosmetic surgery of the face in adults and children. Dr. Whitaker has made numerous contributions over five decades, including introducing widely used surgical advances, early involvement in the development of infant craniofacial surgery and the nation’s first breakthroughs in bone/soft tissue relations for both reconstructive and aesthetic purposes.
At the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania Dr. Whitaker held a Chair in Plastic Surgery in each place. In addition, Chairs in his name were subsequently established at each of those two places. He is now Surgeon Emeritus at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Honorary Surgeon at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and remains a Professor of Plastic Surgery at Penn.
In 1972 Dr. Whitaker founded the Craniofacial Program at Penn and served as its Director until 2000. In 1987 Dr. Whitaker established the University of Pennsylvania Center for Human Appearance and remains as Director. This was the first multidisciplinary center dedicated to research,
education, and the treatment of appearance-related disorders at a major medical center in the United States.
Dr. Whitaker holds eleven honorary memberships in medical societies including eight in foreign countries. Honors also include the Distinguished Service Award from the American Society of Maxillofacial Surgeons, and the Tessier Medal, given only once before, from the International Society of Craniofacial Surgery.
Two Whitaker lectureships have been established in his name and Dr. Whitaker has been listed in Castle & Connelly’s Best Doctors in America every year published since 1979; in Who’s Who in America since 1996; and in Who’s Who in the World since 2004. Dr. Whitaker’s Academic Activities include having authored or co-authored over 227 papers, and six books on plastic surgery, and having given more than 300 invited lectures to scientific organizations worldwide.
As Chief and Program Director at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, he has had primary responsibility for training plastic surgery resident physicians and craniofacial fellows. Additionally, Dr. Whitaker has served our country as Captain, Medical Corp in the US Army, 1963-1965.
Dr. Whitaker is married to Renata Whitaker, a nurse he met in Montreal while doing his internship there; they have been married for 58 years, and have 3 children.
Congratulations Dr. Whitaker, The Philadelphia County Medical Society is proud and honored to add the Strittmatter Award to your many accomplishments. •
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