Our highest honor, the Bahr Award of Excellence named for Dr. Raymond Bahr, is presented annually to an individual who demonstrates extraordinary excellence, vision, and leadership in advancing health care. Past recipients include:
2016 – Wilbert Mick, MBA
Wilbert (Wil) Mick (October 28, 1953 – November 28, 2016) was a Vice President of Accreditation Services for the American College of Cardiology. Prior to the merger of the American College of Cardiology and the Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care (SCPC), Mick was Chief Executive Officer of SCPC. His continued commitment to the Early Heart Attack Care program underscored his dedication to the prevention and early intervention of heart attacks. Under his leadership, SCPC significantly enriched its accreditation program offerings resulting in more guideline-driven, care processes for ACS, Heart Failure and Atrial Fibrillation patients. Prior to joining SCPC, he was the President of Heartbeat International, he also served as a Regional Director at U.S. Cardiovascular and Administrative Director Heart Institute at St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, FL, as well as Administrative Director at St. Joseph's Heart Institute.
2015 – Richard Aghababian, MD
Dr. Aghababian (July 4, 1948 – October 1, 2014) was the Founding Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center. His commitment to healing patients and educating physicians interlaced his varied interests: emergency medicine, disaster medicine, medical education abroad, and continuing education for physicians at home. He was a Professor of Emergency Medicine and retired Associate Dean for Continuing Medical Education at UMass, Past Commander of MA-2 Disaster Medical Assistance Team, Past President of the American College of Emergency Physicians, and Past President of the Massachusetts Medical Society. He graduated from Harvard College in 1970 and was then a member of the first class of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester in 1974.
2014 – Francis Miller Fesmire, MD
Dr. Fesmire (November 16, 1959 – January 31, 2014) was an emergency physician and a nationally recognized expert in myocardial infarction. He authored numerous academic articles and assisted in the development of clinical guidelines on the standard of care in treating patients with suspected myocardial infarction by the ACEP and the AHA and the ACC. He performed numerous research investigations in chest pain patients, reporting the usefulness of continuous 12-lead ECG monitoring, two-hour delta cardiac marker testing and nuclear cardiac stress testing in the emergency room. The culmination of his studies was The Erlanger Chest Pain Evaluation Protocol published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine in 2002. In 2011, he published a novel Nashville Skyline that received a 5 star review by ForeWord Reviews. His most recent research involved the risk stratification of chest pain patients in the emergency department.
2013 – Alice K. Jacobs, MD
A Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, she and served as the Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratories and Interventional Cardiology until 2011. On July 1, she will assume the role of Vice Chair for Clinical Affairs in the Department of Medicine at Boston Medical Center
In 2004-05, Dr. Jacobs was president of the American Heart Association (AHA) and she has been a member of numerous committees and Task Forces within the national, regional and local AHA and president of the AHA Northeast Affiliate in 2002-03.
Dr. Jacobs is the immediate-past chair of the American College of Cardiology (ACC)/AHA Task Force on Practice Guidelines and a member of several ACC committees. She has led the AHA's Mission: Lifeline, a community-based, national initiative to develop systems of care for ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients and to increase the number of patients with timely access to primary percutaneous coronary intervention. She is also interested in cardiovascular disease in women and the sex-based differences in the epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of ischemic heart disease.
2012 – Christopher P. Cannon, MD, FACC, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Senior Investigator, TIMI Study Group
Cardiovascular Division, Brigham and Women's Hospital
Boston, Massachusetts
Dr. Cannon is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a senior investigator in the Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) Study Group, leading trials such as TACTICS-TIMI 18, PROVE IT-TIMI 22, and CLARITY-TIMI 28. He earned his MD from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, and after completing his residency in internal medicine at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, he was a cardiovascular fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Dr. Cannon has published over 1100 original articles, reviews, book chapters and electronic publications on the topic of acute coronary syndromes and prevention, including works in Circulation, Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), Lancet, JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine. He has received numerous awards, including the Alfred Steiner Research Award, and the Upjohn Achievement in Research Award, the 2012 Raymond Bahr Award from the Society of Cardivascular Patient Care, and leadership awards from the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association.
He is editor-in-chief of the Science and Quality section of ACC's website, Cardiosource (www.cardiosource.org), the news magazine Cardiosource World News as well as the journal Critical Pathways in Cardiology and a 70-book series Contemporary Cardiology. He also serves as the Associate Editor for the JACC iPad edition. He has authored or edited 12 books, including Evidence Based Cardiology and The New Heart Disease Handbook for patients.
Dr. Cannon is the principal investigator for three ongoing trials, IMPROVE IT, SOLID-TIMI 52, and REVEAL-HPS3/TIMI 55 studying three lipid-modifying strategies for secondary prevention.
2011 – Robert L. Jesse, MD, PhD, Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Health Department of Veterans Affairs
Dr. Jesse leads clinical policies and programs for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), the nation's largest integrated healthcare system. In addition to its medical care mission, VHA is the Nation's largest provider of graduate medical education and a major contributor to medical and scientific research.
2010 – Ezra A. Amsterdam, MD, Professor of Internal Medicine and Associate Chief of Cardiology at the University of California School of Medicine (Davis) and Medical Center (Sacramento)
He specializes in management of acute cardiac disease, chest pain unit programs, and preventive cardiology.
2009 – Gregg C. Fonarow, MD, Eliot Corday Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine & Science, UCLA Division of Cardiology, Director, Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center, Co-Director, UCLA Preventative Cardiology Program
He was recognized for major contributions to leading cardiovascular registries, initiatives and clinical research that have greatly advanced the care of patients with acute coronary syndromes and acute heart failure.
2008 – W. Brian Gibler, MD, Professor & Chairman, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Cincinnati
Dr. Gibler is currently Co-Chairman with E. Magnus Ohman, MD, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill for CRUSADE and has been a leader and practicing clinician in the field of emergency medicine for more than 17 years. Prior to his appointment as a Professor and Chairman, he was a faculty member at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee, and then joined the University of Cincinnati Department of Emergency Medicine in 1989 and became Residency Director in 1990. His clinical and teaching experience dates back to 1981. Dr. Gibler founded the Heart ER Program at the University of Cincinnati Hospital and served as the Director from 1991 through 1997.
2007 – Kim A. Eagle, MD, FACC, Albion Walter Hewlett Professor of Internal Medicine and Director of the Cardiovascular Center at the University of Michigan Health System
Dr. Eagle oversees a vigorous outcomes research program focusing on quality, cost-effectiveness, use of practice guidelines in cardiovascular care, evaluation and management of acute coronary syndromes, the evaluation and management of aortic dissection, and the use of modern mathematical models to assess outcomes and risk. His outcomes research team has led quality improvement initiatives across the state of Michigan in acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and coronary angioplasty.
2006 – Mary M. Hand, MSPH, RN,FAHA, Health Scientist Administrator Office of Extramural Research, Education, & Priority Populations Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Ms. Hand is currently the Coordinator for the National Heart Attack Alert Program Office of Prevention, Education, and Control at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute National Institutes of Health. She Co-chaired the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines to Review New Evidence and Update the ACC/AHA 2004 Guidelines for the Management of Patients With ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction.
2005 – Henry J. L. Marriott, MD, FACP, FACC
World-renowned cardiologist Dr Henry "Barney" Marriott has passed away. Marriott, 90, will be best remembered for contributions to the field of ECG interpretation, as he was widely admired for his ability to "analyze complex arrhythmias and teach others how to follow in his path. "
Marriott was a visiting clinical professor at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, the University of South Florida in Tampa, and the University of Florida in Gainesville. He was the 2005 recipient of the Raymond D Bahr Award for Excellence in medical education.
In a profile published earlier this year in Clinical Cardiology, Drs Charles Upshaw and Mark Silverman (Emory University School of Medicine) called Marriott an excellent teacher of electrocardiography. "He became known throughout the world as the most lucid and entertaining teacher of electrocardiography, lecturing throughout the US and at the yearly meetings of the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology, where a crowd would press around to listen," wrote Upshaw and Silverman.
