Jeff Goldhagen, M.D., MPH, was selected to receive the 2011 American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Job Lewis Smith Award, which recognizes one academy member annually for long outstanding service in community pediatrics. Goldhagen will be honored at the Community Pediatrics Awards Luncheon at the AAP National Conference in Boston on Oct. 16.

Professor and chief of the division of community pediatrics, department of pediatrics at the University of Florida College of Medicine-Jacksonville, Goldhagen develops and oversees programs for children who are marginalized by physical conditions and social and environmental determinants, including those who are homeless, terminally and chronically ill, and children who are in foster care and in transition from pediatric to adult care. His professional interests focus on maternal and child health, integrating academic pediatrics and public health, and children’s rights and equity. He will give a presentation on the "Introduction of the New Practice of Societal Pediatrics" at the conference.

The award from the AAP's Council on Community Pediatrics is named for Job Lewis Smith, M.D., a founder of the AAP and a pioneer of American pediatrics. Stanley Fisch, M.D., Harlingen Pediatrics Associates, Harlingen, Texas, who won the award in 2006, nominated Goldhagen because of his decades of work to advance the concept and challenges of equity in child health. Through the council and AAP, they have worked together for 30 years teaching residents in community settings and advancing the practice of community pediatrics.

"He has shifted our focus from lack of access and health care disparities to a global initiative to assert and win rights for all children in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child," Fisch said of Goldhagen. "He has worked with international colleagues in creating teaching materials in child health equity."

In the past three years Goldhagen has traveled to Canada, South Africa, Central and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Puerto Rico and throughout the U.S. to advocate and educate on behalf of children's rights and equity. He is co-founder of the Society for Equity in Child Health—a North American organization to advance the principles and practice of children's rights, social justice and equity—and the Equity Project, a collaboration between the AAP and Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

"This award is in recognition of all of our efforts to improve the health and well-being of children and families," Goldhagen said, crediting his colleagues on the council and others who work on behalf of children's rights. "I remain convinced that the principles and practice of children's rights and health equity have great relevance to the paradigm change in pediatrics that will be required if we are to accomplish the outcomes for children we all seek."

Goldhagen was a lead author of the council's policy statement, "Health Equity and Children's Rights," published in the April 2010 edition of Pediatrics. Fisch said Goldhagen's contributions have been at the important interfaces of pediatrics, public health and public policy and that he has "provided us with an entirely new framework for understanding the place of children amidst the social forces which shape them."

The AAP is an organization of 60,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults.

Featured Faculty

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Jeffrey L. Goldhagen, MD, MPH

Professor - Community Hospice of Northeast Florida/Neviaser Family Professor in Pediatric Palliative Care
Chief, Division of Community and Societal Pediatrics