In 2004, FOCUS introduced the FOCUS Award for the Advancement of Women in Medicine. This award recognizes a faculty member (male or female) whose extraordinary efforts and achievements have enhanced women's professional success, women's healthcare, and/or women's overall quality of life at Penn Medicine. All Penn medical faculty, excluding those who comprise the leadership of FOCUS, in any of the four "fulltime" faculty tracks (Tenure, Clinician-Educator, Research, and Academic-Clinician) and in any rank or department are eligible for nomination. In addition to the institutional recognition this honor brings, the recipient of this annual award receives a plaque and a $1000 monetary prize. The awardee's name is also be added to a plaque that hangs with other School of Medicine Awards.  Nominations and letters of support may be submitted by any member of the School of Medicine faculty (male or female). 

2006

2005

2004

Lisa M. Bellini, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine
Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care
Vice Chair for Education and Inpatient Services

This annual faculty mentoring award was initiated by FOCUS in 1999 in order to create a visible and presitigious way to formally recognize the critical value of mentoring in academic medicine.  In 2004, at the request of the Dean, the award became one of the School of Medicine Awards of Excellence, the Arthur K. Asbury Award for Outstanding Faculty Mentoring. FOCUS is pleased and honored by the evolution of this award to a permanent place among the other School of Medicine awards and to have been the foundation for this Award of Excellence for Mentoring.

As a FOCUS award from 1999- 2003, this mentoring award was given to a faculty member chosen from the entire School of Medicine community who, according to the collective opinion of the University of Pennsylvania women medical faculty, served as an exceptional mentor to other faculty. All faculty, male or female and of any rank or track, were eligible for nomination. The Directors and Co-Directors of FOCUS and the Leadership Mentoring Program were not eligible for this award. While the definition of an outstanding mentor is complex, the following paragraph is a beginning:

A mentor is a trusted guide who supports and facilitates a mentee's development towards the realization of his/her short and long-term career and life goals. A mentor educates, encourages, protects, and facilitates appropriate risk taking to teach the values and skills necessary to successfully navigate the organization. A mentor also opens access to institutional resources and helps the mentee to develop a network of relationships that might otherwise be unavailable to someone at that level of their career and, in so doing, may risk putting his/her own career “on the line.”

The recipient of the FOCUS Mentoring Award for Excellence received a plaque and a $1,000 monetary prize.