Expert on Women’s Health to Speak at UAMS Through Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lectures Program
| LITTLE ROCK – Vivian W. Pinn, M.D., director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will discuss “Current Issues in Women’s Health,” at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 7.
Pinn’s lecture will be in the Fred Smith Auditorium on the 12th floor of the UAMS
Jackson T. Stephens Spine and Neurosciences Institute. The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, call 686-5689.
This Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture is part of the Winthrop Rockefeller
Distinguished Lectures, established in 1972. This privately endowed program provides
funding to assist campuses of the University of Arkansas System in bringing outstanding
lecturers who might not be attainable otherwise.
Pinn has long been active in efforts to improve the health and career opportunities for women and minorities. She has presented her office’s mandate, programs and initiatives to many national and international individuals and organizations with an interest in improving women’s health and the health of minorities.
She led a national effort to reexamine priorities for research on women’s health, involving more than 1,500 advocates, scientists, policy makers, educators and health care providers. Her recent focus has been to raise the perception of the scientific community about the importance of sex and gender factors in basic science, clinical research and health care.
Pinn came to NIH from Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she was professor and chair of the Department of Pathology since 1982. She previously held positions at Tufts University and Harvard Medical School. She received her medical degree from the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 1967, where she was the only woman and minority in her class. She completed her postgraduate training in pathology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, serving as a teaching fellow at Harvard.
Pinn served as the 88th president of the National Medical Association from 1989 to1990, and was the second woman president of the organization. She has been inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and elected to the Institute of Medicine. In 2004, she received the President’s Achievement Award from the American Medical Women’s Association.
UAMS is the state’s only comprehensive academic health center, with five colleges, a graduate school, a medical center, five centers of excellence and a statewide network of regional centers. UAMS has more than 2,200 students and 660 residents and is the state’s largest public employer with almost 9,000 employees. UAMS and its affiliates have an economic impact in Arkansas of $4.1 billion a year.
UAMS centers of excellence are the Arkansas Cancer Research Center, Harvey and Bernice Jones Eye Institute, Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging, Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy and Jackson T. Stephens Spine and Neurosciences Institute.