John P. McGovern Award

Dr. John P. McGovern was an outstanding allergist, scholar, and philanthropist. He was a member of the AMWA Southwest Chapter since 1961, elected an AMWA Fellow in 1967 and received the association’s highest honor, the Harold Swanberg Distinguished Service Award, in 1988. He expressed his commitment to excellence in medical writing by establishing the John P. McGovern Award Lectureship for the Southwest Chapter in 1982 and the John P. McGovern Medal, which was first awarded at the AMWA Annual Conference in Montreal, Canada, in 1985.

In many ways, Dr. McGovern resembled the handful of physician-writers who founded AMWA in 1940. Dr. McGovern was the author or coauthor of 252 publications, including 26 books, in the medical sciences, humanities, and health promotion and disease prevention. He has been the editor, the associate editor, or a member of editorial boards of more than 23 scientific journals.

Dr. McGovern has left AMWA an enduring legacy. The members of AMWA have been fortunate indeed to be recipients of his benevolence.

Below are the list of award winners of the John P. McGovern Award Lectureship.

• 2023 – Jen Gunter MD, FRCS(C), FACOG, DABPM, ABPMR
  • The Internet, Medical Misinformation and Reproductive Health: A Perfect Storm

• 2022 – Jonathan Patz, MD, MPH
  • Confronting the Global Climate Crisis Brings Major Health Benefits

• 2021 – Ed Yong
  • A Year of Pandemic Reporting

• 2020 – Randy Olson, PhD
  • Medical Obfuscation: The ABT Framework to the Rescue

• 2019 – Maryn McKenna
  • Lecture Untitled

• 2018 – Helen Valier, Ph.D.
  • Cancer, Men, and Medicine: What Cancer’s Past Can Tell Us about the Future of Academic Medicine

• 2017 – Peter Hotez, MD, Ph.D.
  • Zika and the Neglected Tropical Diseases: Making People Care About “The Most Important Diseases You Have Never Heard Of”

• 2016 – Kirsten Ostherr, Ph.D.
  • Narrative Medicine in the Age of Big Data

• 2015 – Ivan Oransky, MD
  • Lecture Untitled

• 2014 – David Eagleman, Ph.D.
  • Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain and the Secret Lives of Brain Scientists

• 2013 – Larry Kaplow
  • Medicine for the Mass Audience; HOUSE: A Case Study

• 2012 – Walter Baile, MD and Cathy Kirwood, MPH
  • I*CARE: Learning and Teaching Communication Skills

• 2011 – Mauro Ferrari, MD
  • Perspectives in Nanomedicine

• 2010 – Megan Cole
  • For the Love of Words: A Medical Writer’s Story on Stage

• 2009 – Lawrence K. Altman, MD
  • Who Goes First? The Story of Self-Experimentation in Medicine

• 2008 – Stuart Yudofsky, MD
  • The Impact of Stigmatization on the Mentally Ill

• 2007 – Steve Sternberg
  • Covering the Plague: AIDS, the Press, and a Personal Journey

• 2006 – Barbara Gastel, MD, MPH
  • Educating Medical Writers and Editors: Adventures on Two Continents

• 2005 – Alan Blum, MD
  • Memoirs of a Medical Activist

• 2004 – Robert E. Rakel, MD
  • Compassion and the Art of Medicine: The Role of the Humanities in a Caring Profession

• 2003 – Robin Marantz Henig
  • Turning Science Into Stories: The Limits of Narrative Nonfiction

• 2002 – Paula L. Knudson
  • The Minefields Surrounding Informed Consent for Research

• 2001 – Walter Pagel, ELS(D)
  • Not Just the Facts, Ma’am: Ideas for Engaging Readers in the Story of Your Science

• 2000 – Dorothy Nelkin
  • Bar-coded Bodies: Commercialization of Body Tissue in the Biotechnology Age

• 1999 – Anne Hudson Jones, PhD
  • Words and Their Magic: Language, Literature, and Medicine

• 1998 – Kay Redfield Jamison, PhD
  • Moods

• 1997 – Abraham Verghese, MD
  • Searching for Meaning

• 1996 – John H. Lienhard, PhD
  • Communication Revolution: A Promise of Social Upheaval

• 1995 – Paul M. Raeburn
  • Truth, Justice, and the American Way—Covering Medical News for the Associated Press

• 1994 – Ruth Doyle SoRelle
  • My Experiences as a Medical Writer, or How The Reader’s Digest Cured My Father’s Gout

• 1993 – John Stone, MD
  • The Human Encounter in Medicine

• 1992 – John C. Bailar III, MD, PhD
  • Communication in Science: Messages Sent, Messages Received

• 1991 – Jane E. Brody
  • Medicine and Media: Pushing a Pound of Prevention Without Public Confusion

• 1990 – Bruce B. Dan, MD
  • Media Medical Reporting: Its Liabilities, Ethical Hazards, and Moral Conflicts

• 1989 – Randy Shilts
  • Lecture Untitled

• 1988 – Jeffrey R. Lyon
  • Playing God in the Nursery

• 1987 – Edward Huth, MD
  • New Technology and the Future of Medical Publishing

• 1986 – Oliver W. Sacks, BM, BCh
  • Lecture Untitled

• 1985 – Richard A. Selzer, MD
  • The Surgeon as Writer

• 1984 – Donald Radcliffe
  • Communication: The Author-Editor-Reader Continuum

• 1983 – Edith Schwager
  • Keynote address, First AMWA Southwest Chapter Conference