Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program to Support Dental Scholars in 2012
One of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s longest running national programs, the Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program, will offer support to dental scholars starting with its 2012 application period. For more than 25 years, the program has fostered diversity among U.S. medical school faculty, and will now work to do the same among dental school faculty.

Beginning with its 2012 application period, the Harold Amos program will fund one or more dentists. For four years, each dental scholar will conduct research in association with a senior faculty member located at an academic dental center noted for its training of young faculty and for pursuing lines of investigation of particular interest to the scholar.

The Harold Amos dental scholars will be selected based on their academic achievement, their commitment to academic research careers, and their potential to achieve senior rank in academic dentistry. Harold Amos scholars receive an annual stipend of up to $75,000 each, complemented by a $30,000 annual grant to support research activities. The Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program will begin accepting applications for its next grant cycle starting in February 2012.

As a result of the expansion, two new members from academic dentistry fields have joined the Harold Amos national advisory committee (NAC). The new NAC members are Francisco Ramos-Gomez, D.D.S., M.S., M.P.H., professor, section of pediatric dentistry, UCLA School of Dentistry, and George W. Taylor, D.M.D., Dr.P.H., professor, University of Michigan School of Dentistry and School of Public Health. On September 1, 2011, Taylor will join the University of California, San Francisco’s School of Dentistry as Leland A. and Gladys K. Barber Distinguished Professor in Dentistry and chair of the department of preventive and restorative dental sciences.

Read More Programs’ Progress

• Community Health Leaders to Accept Nominations Starting in the Fall
• Health & Society Scholars Accepting Applications
• Health & Society Scholars Welcomes New NAC Members

Community Health Leaders to Accept Nominations Starting in the Fall
Do you know someone doing exceptional work who strives to improve health or access to health care in his or her community? Or someone who has solved a daunting community health problem? If so, nominate your local health hero for a 2012 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Health Leaders award.

RWJF selects 10 of these individuals each year to receive the Community Health Leaders award, which includes national recognition, opportunities to network and collaborate with fellow health leaders around the country, and $125,000 to support each leader’s work. The winners receive tools and knowledge to help them continue their efforts to improve health and health care where they live.

Selected leaders come from diverse professional backgrounds and regions of the country. They’re working to solve the health challenges that confront their own communities throughout the United States.

The annual call for nominations will be released this fall. For more information, visit www.communityhealthleaders.org.

Health & Society Scholars Accepting Applications
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars program is accepting applications for scholars who will engage in an intensive, two-year research program (2012–2014). The goals of the program are to better understand and act on the determinants of health that can reduce population health disparities and encourage better health outcomes. Health & Society Scholars are selected based on their potential to contribute creatively to the field of population health, a demonstrated openness to new ideas, demonstrated critical thinking skills, an active interest in interdisciplinary collaboration, commitment to a career consistent with the program’s purpose and goals, and quality of past research. Scholars must have a doctorate by the time they enter the program.

Those selected as Health & Society Scholars will join a prestigious group of past scholars whose research initiatives have led to studies and recommendations for improving health and health care in a variety of areas. These include the reduction of childhood obesity by limiting fast-food marketing; the influence of pharmaceutical advertising on consumers’ health care decisions; the effect of marital status on prenatal health care; and the importance of providing insurance coverage to ensure children’s access to medical services.

For more information, visit http://www.healthandsocietyscholars.org/.

Health & Society Scholars Welcomes New NAC Members
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars program has installed three new national advisory committee members. They are:

• Mark Hayward, Ph.D., professor of sociology, Centennial Commission Professor in the Liberal Arts, and director of the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently the president of the Southern Demographic Association and chair-elect of the Aging and Life Course section of the American Sociological Association.
• Mark A. Nichter, Ph.D., Regents Professor and coordinator of the Graduate Medical Anthropology Training Program at the University of Arizona. He is the author of numerous articles in a wide variety of health-related fields and books, including Global Health: Why Cultural Perceptions, Social Representations, and Biopolitics Matter (2008).
• Amelie G. Ramirez, Dr.P.H., professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. She also is founding director of the Institute for Health Promotion Research, which researches health disparities.