AAMC Chooses UAMS’ Jennifer Hunt, M.D., as 2019 Emerging Leader

By Linda Haymes

The award, only given to one woman each year, will be presented at the organization’s annual meeting Nov. 9 in Phoenix, Arizona. Established in 1995, it recognizes those who have been instrumental in developing women leaders.

“She has made a lasting impression on me and the other women in her program,” said Roberta Gebhard, D.O., president of the American Medical Women’s Association and one of several nominating Hunt. “She is a lifelong physician leader and gifted mentor.”

Hunt has sought out and mentored dozens of female physicians, many of whom now occupy positions of greatly increased responsibility, said UAMS’ Jennifer Laudadio, M.D., vice chair for Clinical Operations in the Pathology Department.

Hunt created an eight-week leadership program for women in medicine designed to increase self-confidence and reduce physician burn out and attended by nearly 100 female physicians.

Earlier this year, Hunt was one of five physicians nationwide chosen for the AAMC’s Council of Deans Fellowship Program for those identified as being qualified to become deans.

Hunt joined UAMS in 2011 and is the Aubrey Hough Endowed Professor of Pathology. She is nationally and internationally recognized for her clinical subspecialty expertise in head and neck, endocrine, and molecular anatomic pathology.

Before arriving at UAMS, Hunt served as an associate professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and an associate chief of pathology and chief of anatomic and molecular pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

She is a graduate of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and received a master’s degree in education from the University of Pennsylvania. Hunt completed her residency in anatomic pathology and a fellowship in molecular genetic pathology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

UAMS is the state’s only health sciences university, with colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Health Professions and Public Health; a graduate school; a hospital; a main campus in Little Rock; a Northwest Arkansas regional campus in Fayetteville; a statewide network of regional campuses; and eight institutes: the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, Psychiatric Research Institute, Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging, Translational Research Institute, Institute for Digital Health & Innovation and the Institute for Community Health Innovation. UAMS includes UAMS Health, a statewide health system that encompasses all of UAMS’ clinical enterprise. UAMS is the only adult Level 1 trauma center in the state. UAMS has 3,275 students, 890 medical residents and fellows, and five dental residents. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 12,000 employees, including 1,200 physicians who provide care to patients at UAMS, its regional campuses, Arkansas Children’s, the VA Medical Center and Baptist Health. Visit www.uams.edu or uamshealth.com. Find us on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube or Instagram.

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