Career Accomplishment Award

The Career Accomplishment Award is given to honor an outstanding scholar with extraordinary contributions to the field of epidemiology, or an individual whose work has had a profound impact on epidemiology and shifted the way we practice epidemiology. Career accomplishment and leadership impact on the field are core criteria that are used for selection of the annual awardee.

Eligibility

Candidates must be nominated by at least one SER member. Self-nomination will not be accepted. Multiple nominations do not increase the likelihood of being awarded. In the case of multiple nominations for a single candidate, submitters will be contacted to coordinate a joint nomination.

Requirements

Nominators must submit a short summary (no more than 500 words) describing the individual’s key accomplishments and impact on the field of epidemiology that led to the nomination. Please refrain from simply listing items that can be found on the nominee’s CV. Instead, please synthesize how these items have impacted the practice of epidemiology.

Nominators should provide a copy of the nominee’s CV at the time of submission.

Self-nominations will not be accepted.

If needed, finalists will be asked to provide 2 additional letters of support (less than or equal to 2 pages)

Award Details

The award winner will receive complimentary meeting registration to SER’s Annual meeting, travel funds reimbursement up to the amount of $2,000, and be invited to give a scientific presentation at the Annual Meeting.

Dr. Rothman is a Distinguished Fellow Emeritus at the Research Triangle Institute, and a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health. His research interests in epidemiology have spanned a range of health problems that includes cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurologic disease, birth defects, injuries, environmental exposures and drug epidemiology. His main career focus, however, has been the development and teaching of the concepts and methods of epidemiologic research. He has written two epidemiologic textbooks: Modern Epidemiology, first published in 1986 and now in its fourth edition, and Epidemiology An Introduction, in its second edition. He was the founding editor of the journal Epidemiology, an Editor of the American Journal of Epidemiology, and a member of the Editorial Board of the New England Journal of Medicine. He is a Past President of the Society for Epidemiologic Research, an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology, a Fellow of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology, and a recipient of the Abraham Lilienfeld Teaching Award from the American Public Health Association.

Previous Award Winners

2025

Carolyn Drews-Botsch
Dr. Carolyn Drews-Botsch is a Professor of Global and Community Health in the College of Public Health. Her research has focused on the epidemiology of pediatric conditions and the factors, particularly in the perinatal period, that contribute to their etiology. Specifically, her work seeks to understand these conditions, and carefully apply modern epidemiologic methods to studies of these conditions. Her research program has included work in a variety of related fields including congenital cataracts, fetal growth restriction – particularly in relationship to placental development, intellectual disabilities and autism spectrum disorders.

2024

Sean Hennessy
Sean Hennessy leads the University of Pennsylvania’s Division of Epidemiology and its Center for Real-world Effectiveness and Safety of Therapeutics (CREST). His research evaluates the real-world effectiveness and safety of prescription drugs using healthcare data. His research program studies serious health consequences of drug-drug interactions involving high-risk drugs including anticoagulants, treatments for diabetes, and medications used for opioid use disorder, and is widely cited in clinical compendia of drug-drug interactions. He and his colleagues identified a survival benefit of potassium supplements in users of loop diuretics, and found that this survival benefit increases with hotter outdoor temperatures.

2023

Jodie Guest
Dr. Jodie Guest is a Professor and Senior Vice Chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Rollins School of Public Health, Co-Director of the Office of Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center, and the Associate Program Director for the Physician Assistant Program in the School of Medicine at Emory University. She has been the recipient of multiple awards at Emory, most recently the 2022 Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Alumni Award for Rollins School of Public Health, the 2022 and 2020 Rollins School of Public Health Professor of the Year, 2020 Teaching Excellence Award from the Department of Epidemiology, and the 2019 Emory School of Medicine Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Award.

2022

Beate Ritz
Beate Ritz MD, Ph.D. is a Professor of Epidemiology at the Fielding School of Public Health with appointments in Environmental Health Sciences and Neurology, and the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at UCLA. Her primary research interests are occupational and environmental exposures and chronic diseases originating in the prenatal period (adverse birth outcomes and neurodevelopment) as well as neurodegenerative disorders (Parkinson’s and Alzheimer disease). Her research developed geographic information system (GIS)-based exposure assessment tools for air pollution and pesticide exposures, and also employs omics tools including metabolomic and methylomic approaches to study interactions between environmental and genetic or biologic factors at both ends of the lifespan.

2021

Ana Diez Roux

2020

Godfrey Oakley
Dr. Oakley is Director Center for Spina Bifida Prevention and Research Professor of Epidemiology, Emory University Rollins School of Public Health. Dr. Oakley was formerly Director, Division of Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While at CDC, he and his team provided the scientific and policy leadership critical to persuading the Food and Drug Administration to mandate folic acid fortification of “enriched” flour to prevent spina bifida, a disabling birth defect.

2019

Sherman James
A social epidemiologist, Sherman James is currently a Research Professor of Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University. He assumed this position on July 1, 2014 after retiring from Duke University on June 30, 2014. At Duke, he was the Susan B. King Distinguished Professor of Public Policy (2003-2014) and also held professorships in Sociology and Community and Family Medicine. Prior to Duke, he taught in the epidemiology departments at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (1973-89), and the University of Michigan (1989-03).

Portrait of Dr. Allen Wilcox of NIEHS (Epidemiology Branch)

2018

Allen Wilcox
Allen Wilcox is a reproductive epidemiologist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Studies (NIEHS, NIH) in Durham, NC. He’s the author of Fertility and Pregnancy: An Epidemiologic Perspective, published by Oxford U Press. He is past president of SER, SPER, and the American Epidemiological Society, and served for 14 years as the Editor-in-Chief of EPIDEMIOLOGY. He received an MD from the University of Michigan, a PhD in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina, and an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Bergen (Norway).

2017

Kenneth Rothman
Dr. Rothman is a Distinguished Fellow at the Research Triangle Institute, an independent nonprofit research institute dedicated to improving the human condition. He is also a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health. His research interests in epidemiology have spanned a range of health problems that includes cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurologic disease, birth defects, injuries, environmental exposures and drug epidemiology. His main career focus, however, has been the development and teaching of the concepts and methods of epidemiologic research. He has written two epidemiologic textbooks: Modern Epidemiology, first published in 1986 and now in its third edition, and Epidemiology – An Introduction, now in its second edition. He was the founding editor of the journal Epidemiology, an Assistant Editor of the American Journal of Public Health, an Editor of the American Journal of Epidemiology, and a member of the Editorial Board of the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet.

2015

Louise A. Brinton
After receiving an M.P.H. in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dr. Brinton joined the NCI as a staff fellow in 1976. She earned a Ph.D. in epidemiology from The Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1979, and subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. Dr. Brinton was appointed Acting Chief of the Environmental Studies Section in 1984, and in 1996 became Chief of the Environmental Epidemiology Branch (now called the Hormonal and Reproductive Epidemiology Branch). She served on the Executive Board of the Society for Epidemiologic Research, and was elected president of the organization in 1990. Dr. Brinton has received the PHS Special Recognition Award and the NIH Director’s Award for innovative leadership in women’s health research. She has also been honored by receipt of the H.A. Tyroler Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of North Carolina and the American College of Epidemiology’s Abraham Lilienfeld Award.

2014

Lynn Rosenberg
Dr. Lynn Rosenberg is Associate Director of the Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University and Professor of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health. Her earlier research focused on drug, cardiovascular, and cancer epidemiology in men and women. In the last two decades, as Principal Investigator of the Black Women’s Health Study, her research has focused on elucidating risk factors for breast cancer, other cancers, diabetes, uterine fibroids, sarcoidosis, and other serious illnesses among African American women.

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