Honorary Degree Recipients

Honorary Degree Recipient

Dr. Otis W. Brawley is a globally recognized expert in cancer screening, prevention and treatment, and the design of trials to assess them. His work focuses on how to close racial, economic and social inequities in the treatment of cancer. He concentrates on the practice of evidence based medicine and efficiency in healthcare.

His work in cancer screening relates to his interest in reducing health disparities by making healthcare more efficient. He has defined better explanations of the real benefits and limitations of science-directed screening programs to physicians, the lay public and policy makers. His balanced approach to prostate cancer screening and treatment recognizes the potential for benefits and risks, and allows greater patient involvement for the process.

In the Detroit neighborhood where Dr. Brawley grew up, he saw how the lack of health care on those in his community had its impact. It was while he was still in high Otis W. Brawley, MD, MACP, school, volunteering at an area Veterans Administration Hospital that he was inspired by FASCO, FACE the scientists and physicians there. A self-described “science nerd,” Dr. Brawley Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Oncology and Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins gravitated toward research because it blends the practice of medicine with pure science. University Today, he leads a broad interdisciplinary research effort focused on cancer health Associate Director, Community Outreach disparities. and Engagement at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Johns

After receiving both his undergraduate and medical degrees at the University of Hopkins University Chicago, Dr. Brawley completed a residency in internal medicine at Case Western Reserve and a fellowship in medical oncology at the National Cancer Institute.

Following his fellowship, he remained at the National Cancer Institute as an oncologist and senior investigator and also served as its director of the Office of Special Populations until 2001. His work there, and for Surgeon General David Satcher, demonstrated differing healthcare outcomes by race, socioeconomic status, and geography. At that time, he moved to Atlanta to become director of the Georgia Cancer Center and Chief of Hematology and Oncology at Grady Memorial Hospital and professor of hematology, oncology, medicine and epidemiology at Emory University.

From 1988 until 2001, Dr. Brawley served as an active duty, tenured commissioned officer, in the U.S. Public Health Service and rose to the rank of captain. From 2001 until 2014, he served as a reserve commissioned officer in the U.S. Public Health Service, and was deployed for active duty to help with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in Southern Louisiana, in 2006.

From 2007 to 2018, Dr. Brawley was chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society, where he oversaw the largest private program funding cancer research in the United States. While there, he was responsible for promoting the goals of cancer prevention, early detection, and quality treatment through cancer research and education. He championed efforts to decrease smoking, implement other lifestyle risk reduction programs, provide critical support to cancer patients, and concentrate cancer control efforts where they could be most effective.

For two decades, Dr. Brawley has served on numerous federal and private advisory boards and panels, including the Surgeon General’s Task Force on Cancer Health Disparities through the Department of Health and Human Services and the Board of Regents Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in the Department of Defense, where he was nominated by the U.S. president and confirmed by the Senate.

He was appointed as a Georgia Cancer Coalition Scholar and was given the Key to St. Bernard Parish and the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) Meritorious Service Medal for efforts during Hurricane Katrina. He received the Department of Defense Uniformed Services University Distinguished Service Award and the American Medical Association Distinguished Service Award. He was recently given the Martin D. Abeloff Award for Excellence in Public Health and Cancer Control from the Maryland State Council of Cancer Control.

His published works deal with challenging topics of the harms of overdiagnosis, overtreatment, and complications of treatment due to cancer screening. His book entitled “How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick in America” emphasizes a principle that guide us at Upstate and across the country and the world: use resources wisely with allegiance to the science, and become wiser in our use of health care, an inspiration that will benefit all of our faculty and staff and our graduates.

Honorary Degree Recipient

Dr. Augustus A. White is an internationally known physician, and a widely published authority on biomechanics of the spine, fracture healing and spinal care. For the past five decades, Dr. White has also committed himself to issues of diversity, and is nationally recognized for his work in medical education and health care disparities.

Dr. White was the first African American to graduate from Stanford Medical School in 1961 and become a surgical resident at Yale-New Haven Hospital in 1963. Even after he became a renowned physician, there were times when bigoted patients did not want Dr. White to treat them, friends said. But Dr. White remained an unfailing optimist.

He has quietly helped push back medicine's color line while becoming one of the foremost orthopedic surgeons in the world. A noted author who founded Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's academic orthopedic program, Dr. White has been a leading advocate for racial equality and cultural sensitivity training at Harvard, Brown Augustus A. White, III, MD, University, Yale University and orthopedics nationally. PhD

Dr. White grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of a doctor and a librarian. He Harvard University Director, Culturally Competent Care attended segregated schools before the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, and Education Program later graduated from the private Mount Herman School in Massachusetts, in 1953. He Ellen and Melvin Gordon Distinguished Professor of Medical Education completed his pre-medical studies cum laude with High Honors in Psychology at Brown Professor, Orthopaedic Surgery University in 1957. A standout football player there, he decided to pledge the Delta Former Professor, Harvard-MIT Division of Upsilon (DU) fraternity, the first African American ever to do so. Dissuaded by friends, Health Sciences and Technology Former Advisory Dean, William Augustus he pledged anyway, became a brother, and was so popular that by his senior year he was Hinton Society elected president. Former Professor, Harvard/MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology

Being a trailblazer has not always been easy. In 1956, DU officials chose to cancel Orthopaedic Surgeon-in-Chief Emeritus, their national convention rather that allow a Black man to attend. It wasn’t until three Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center decades later that he received his invitation.

After completing his residency, he joined the U.S. Army Medical Corps as a combat surgeon in Vietnam, from 1966-1967; he was awarded the Bronze Star for bravery while treating soldiers injured in battle and patients in a leper colony. Following that, he studied at the University of Gothenburg and at the Karolinska Institute where he obtained a PhD for research on the biomechanics of the spine in 1970.

He became full professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Yale in 1977, and director of the Engineering Laboratory for Musculoskeletal Disease. Over the years, he has trained 25 spine surgeons in the Daniel E. Hogan Spine Fellowship Program. While his professional life has drawn him to classroom, laboratory and lecture hall, he is most committed to direct patient care.

Stimulated by a desire to better meet the challenges in health care management, he completed the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School where he was invited by his classmates to speak at the graduation ceremonies. He was the Orthopaedic Surgeon-in-Chief at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, MA, for 13 years.

A winner of numerous prestigious awards, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons has presented Dr. White with its Diversity Award and the William W. Tipton, Jr., MD Leadership Award. He is the first individual to receive both these awards. In 2018, the annual issue of The Orthopaedic Journal at Harvard Medical School was dedicated to him, recognizing his longstanding accomplishments at Harvard. That same year, he received the Meritorious Achievement Award from the National Medical Association for his exceptional work in medicine. In 2020, he was named the recipient of the J. Robert Gladden Orthopaedic Society Alvin H. Crawford, MD Mentoring Award and the Feagin Alumni Network Award. He recently became a member of The HistoryMakers MedicalMakers Advisory Board. Notably, he has received eight Honorary Degrees throughout the course of his career.

He has authored “The Clinical Biomechanics of the Spine” and "Seeing Patients: A Surgeon’s Story of Race and Medical Bias.” He has also coauthored a timely book “Overcoming: Lessons in Triumphing Over Adversity and the Power of Our Common Humanity.”

In addition to his lofty achievements and legendary calm demeanor, he remains humble to the core. He may be most beloved for serving as guidance counselor and father figure to countless individuals. “He burns with the desire to help people make the world a better place,” say students, friends and colleagues.

Honorary Degree Recipient

Dr. Camara Jones is a family physician, epidemiologist and past president of the American Public Health Association. Her work focuses on naming, measuring and addressing the impacts of racism on the health and well-being of the nation. She seeks to broaden the national health debate to include universal access to high quality health care and also increase attention to the social determinants of health and equity.

She recently completed her tenure as the 2019-2020 Evelyn Green Davis Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and is currently a presidential visiting fellow at the Yale School of Medicine in the Department of Medicine and the Office of Health Equity Research. Dr. Jones will serve as the 2021-2022 UCSF Presidential Chair at the University of California San Francisco. Camara Phyllis Jones, MD,

The oldest of three girls, she and her sisters (who are twins one year younger) were all MPH, PhD subtly but successfully inspired, especially by their mother, to pursue careers as doctors. Her Adjunct Professor, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Department of mother thought that medicine was the best way for anyone to make a contribution to Behavioral Sciences and Health Education and humanity, Dr. Jones recalls. Jones’ mother was a mathematics educator and high school the Department of Epidemiology Adjunct Associate Professor, Morehouseprincipal in the Detroit Public Schools who had wanted to become a doctor when she was School of Medicine, Department of younger but had been told that women weren’t doctors. Jones’ father was a general surgeon Community Health and Preventive Medicine who provided the quiet example of medicine as community service.

A public health leader, Dr. Jones is valued for her creativity and intellectual agility. As a methodologist, she has developed new ways for comparing data to investigate population-level risk factors and propose population-level interventions. As a social epidemiologist, her work on "race"-associated differences in health outcomes goes beyond simply documenting those differences to vigorously investigating the structural causes of the differences. As a teacher, her allegories on "race" and racism illuminate topics that are otherwise difficult for many Americans to understand or discuss. She aims to catalyze a National Campaign Against Racism that will mobilize and engage all Americans.

Dr. Jones was an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health from 1994 to 2000, before being recruited to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2000 to 2014, where she served as a medical officer and research director on Social Determinants of Health and Equity.

Most recently, she was a senior fellow at the Satcher Health Leadership Institute and the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine from 2013 to 2019.

She has been elected to service on many professional boards, including the Board of Directors of the American College of Epidemiology, the Executive Board of the American Public Health Association, and the Board of Directors of the National Black Women’s Health Project and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the DeKalb County (Georgia) Board of Health and on the National Board of Public Health Examiners. She is also actively sought as a contributor to national efforts to eliminate health disparities and achieve health equity in her current and past roles.

Her many honors include the Paul Revere Award, a lifetime achievement award from the Massachusetts Public Health Association (2020): the Wellesley Alumnae Achievement Award (Wellesley College’s highest alumnae honor, 2018), the John Snow Award (given in recognition of “enduring contributions to public health through epidemiologic methods and practice” by the American Public Health Association’s Epidemiology Section and the Royal Society for Public Health, 2011), and awards named after luminaries David Satcher (2003), Hildrus A. Poindexter (2009), Paul Cornely (2016), Shirley Nathan Pulliam (2016), Louis Stokes (2018), Frances Borden-Hubbard (2018), and Cato T. Laurencin (2018).

Lauded for her compelling clarity on issues of “race” and racism, she has delivered eight Commencement Addresses over the past several years and was also awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2016.

Committed to public service, she is actively involved on many national advisory panels and committees. She sits on many prestigious editorial boards and is a prolific author. A powerful and inciteful speaker, she is a master storyteller who uses allegories to discuss race and racism in the United States, and to empower people to take action to reduce racism and its impact on health.

Dr. Jones earned her BA in Molecular Biology from Wellesley College, her MD from the Stanford University School of Medicine, and both her Master of Public Health and her PhD in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. She also completed residency training in General Preventive Medicine at Johns Hopkins and in Family Practice at the Residency Program in Social Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center.