Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program (AMFDP) Hepatology Award
AASLD solidified its commitment to DE&I by investing in its own Harold Amos Medical Faculty Award Scholar. For the next four years, AASLD will support our awardee as she advances her innovative research.
AASLD Announces Amos Award Winner - Dr. Ashley Spann
As part of AASLD’s commitment to championing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within the field of hepatology, AASLD is pleased to announce the inaugural recipient of the Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program Hepatology Award, Ashley L. Spann, MD, MSACI of Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
“This award goes beyond me. It’s up to us to think about how we can improve those disparities and one of the biggest things that we know is that we need to be able to have a representative workforce of our patient population. AASLD supporting these types of efforts is incredibly important and impactful for the community,” Dr. Spann said.
Dr. Spann is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition with a secondary appointment in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She is a practicing transplant hepatologist who focuses on the management of complications related to end-stage liver disease.
She completed internal medicine training at Duke University Medical Center, followed by fellowships in gastroenterology, clinical informatics, and transplant hepatology at Vanderbilt, along with a Master of Science in Applied Clinical Informatics.
About the AASLD Harold AMFDP Award (Harold Amos Award)
For over 20 years, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has worked to increase the representation of minority scholars in academic medicine through its Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program. The program was created to assist faculty from historically disadvantaged backgrounds to achieve senior rank in academic medicine. It is named after Harold Amos, PhD, who was the first African-American to chair a department, now the Department of Microbiology and Medical Genetics, at the Harvard Medical School.
The AASLD Governing Board recently approved support for the program to strengthen its commitment to DE&I efforts in hepatology. Through the program, AASLD is committed to funding one AMFDP hepatology scholar for 4 years. The selected scholar is expected to spend at least 70 percent of his/her time on research activities in association with a senior faculty member located at an academic medical center and will receive an annual stipend of up to $75,000, complemented by a $30,000 annual grant toward support of research activities. The selected awardee is assigned a National Advisory Committee mentor, following an application review and an in-person interview, who will follow their progress throughout the award term and provide additional guidance.