Schaumburg, Illinois Jun 4, 2019 (Issuewire.com) - New President and President-Elect Assume Leadership of the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA)
The American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA) installed Roberta E. Gebhard, DO as President and Nicole P. Sandhu, MD, PhD as President-Elect at its meeting on March 30, 2019.
Roberta E. Gebhard, DO
Roberta E. Gebhard, DO, is a board-certified Family Physician and the first osteopathic physician to be AMWA President. She serves on the Advisory Council for TIME’S UP Healthcare.
Dr. Gebhard has been active in AMWA throughout her career. In 2010, she founded AMWA’s Gender Equity Task Force (GETF). Two years later, she and her co-chair, Dr. Linda Brodsky, were awarded the prestigious Joan F. Giambalvo Scholarship to study the work habits of women physicians (recently submitted for publication). Under her leadership, GETF published the article “Workplace Bullying Among Family Physicians: A Gender-Focused Study” (J Women’s Health, 2016) and was awarded the 2018 Giambalvo Scholarship for “Fixing the Leaky Pipeline,” a project which seeks to identify factors leading to attrition of women in medicine, barriers to career advancement, and potential interventions.
Dr. Gebhard has served AMWA as Secretary (2014-2016, 2017-2018), Vice President of Membership, Region 2 Governor, Program Chair, and member of the Board of Directors (several terms). In recognition of her dedication to AMWA, she was awarded the AMWA Commitment to Excellence Award (2014) and the Bertha Van Hoosen Award (2015). She is currently the AMWA representative to CARE, an international nongovernmental organization dedicated to the empowerment of women and girls around the world, and Vision 2020, a Drexel University initiative committed to achieving women’s economic and social equality.
Dr. Gebhard was born in Buffalo, New York and graduated from State University of New York at Fredonia in 1980 with a BS in Biology and a BA in Psychology. She received her DO from University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine (1986) and completed a residency in family medicine at the Mid-Hudson Family Medicine Residency Program in Kingston, NY (in 1990), earning the LITZ Foundation Award for Outstanding Participation. She received a Faculty Development Certificate from Duke University, Department of Family Medicine, and completed a Faculty Development Fellowship in Family Medicine at SUNY Buffalo in 1997.
Dr. Gebhard previously held positions at the Indian Health Service in Wolf Point, MT, where she received the Employee Personnel Management Systems Award for Excellence; at SUNY Buffalo for 12 years where she was Clinical Assistant Professor of Family Medicine; at the Upper West Side Family Health Center where she received the Above and Beyond the Call of Duty Award (2005); and most recently at Masonic Care Community in Utica, NY, where she was Associate Medical Director.
Dr. Gebhard is a member of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine and previously served as Co-chair of the STFM Group-On Women. She authored two chapters in Pfenninger and Fowler’s Procedures in Primary Care: Treatment of Burns, and Use of the Woods Lamp, and co-authored the article “Required Procedural Training in Family Medicine Training: A Consensus Statement” (Family Medicine, 2008). Since 1998, she has served on the University at Buffalo Medical School Admissions Committee.
Dr. Gebhard lives in Grand Island, NY, and is happily married to Greg, her soul-mate of 34 years and a man of good conscience. She is proud of her three adult sons, also men of a good conscience, and her daughter, a women’s rights activist who plans to attend law school.
Dr. Gebhard looks forward to leading AMWA in its mission to advance women in medicine, advocate for equity and ensure excellence in healthcare.
Nicole P. Sandhu, MD, PhD
Nicole P. Sandhu, MD, PhD, FACP, FAMWA, the 2019-2020 President-Elect of AMWA, is a board-certified internist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN where she has been in practice for nearly 15 years. The majority of her clinical time is spent in the Breast Diagnostic Clinic, where she works with a talented, patient-centered team of multidisciplinary physicians and allied health professionals. She also continues to practice general internal medicine, seeing patients with complex medical issues. Dr. Sandhu’s academic interests and research primarily focus on the cardiovascular impact of cancer-related therapy. She has served as a scientific member of the Mayo Clinic Institutional Review Board, serves as co-chair of the Breast Clinic Research Committee and as a member of the General Internal Medicine Research Committee, has served as a peer reviewer for medical journals, and has been Principle Investigator or Co-Investigator on multiple research protocols. She became the Program Director for the Women’s Health Fellowship in 2009 and subsequently developed and served as the first Program Director for the General Internal Medicine Fellowship; through her work as Program Director, Dr. Sandhu has developed and implemented new curricula. She is involved in the education, supervision, and mentoring of medical students and residents, and has mentored undergraduate and graduate students; she has been named as one of the top educators in the Internal Medicine residency program multiple times. Dr. Sandhu has coauthored 36 peer-reviewed publications and 5 medical textbook chapters, has served as course co-director for the Mayo Clinic Internal Medicine Board Review Course and associate editor of the Mayo Clinic Internal Medicine Board Review textbook and has presented at numerous national, and international conferences.
After graduating from the University of Minnesota Medical School in 2001, Dr. Sandhu completed her residency in Internal Medicine at the Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education in 2004 and was the 2004 recipient of the LeAnne McCaffrey Women in Medicine Award. Prior to medical school, Dr. Sandhu completed her PhD in molecular biology at the Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science under the mentorship of Thomas Spelsberg, PhD.
Dr. Sandhu has been an active member of AMWA since 2009. She has served as Co-Chair and Chair of the Membership Committee, Co-Chair of the Breast Cancer Task Force, and has been a member of the Governance Committee. Most recently, she has served on the Board of Directors, and in 2020 will become the President of AMWA.
In addition to her involvement in AMWA, Dr. Sandhu is a member of ACP, the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM), and the National Consortium of Breast Centers (NCBC). Dr. Sandhu currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Rochester, MN Diversity Council, to which she was elected in 2017. She is engaged in local community efforts related to diversity and inclusion, as well as efforts at Mayo Clinic, where she is a member of the General Internal Medicine Diversity and Inclusion Planning Team. She has previously been named a Diversity Champion at Mayo Clinic.
On a personal level, Dr. Sandhu is the proud mother of two daughters, Amrit, currently completing her freshman year at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and Simran, who will begin high school in September of 2019. Dr. Sandhu is the proud daughter of Paul and Anita Punkay, who live in Chicago where Nicole was born and raised and where she went to college (graduating from DePaul University in 1990 with a BS in Biology). She is married to Gurpreet Sandhu, MD, PhD, Medical Director of the Mayo Clinic Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory, whom she met during graduate school.
Dr. Sandhu derives joy from her clinical practice where she feels privileged to care for her patients and she feels blessed to have wonderful colleagues who are also treasured friends, but she considers her greatest accomplishment to be raising two strong, independent young women who speak out against injustice and intolerance, and want to do their part to change the world for the better.
Dr. Sandhu is truly humbled and wishes to express her sincere appreciation to her fellow AMWA members for choosing her to lead AMWA, which for over 100 years has been dedicated to advancing women in medicine. She looks forward to continued collaboration with a remarkable group of multispecialty women physicians from across the US, and to continuing AMWA’s work to support and advocate for the next generations of women physicians.
In addition, AMWA’s new board members include Cherilyn Cecchini, MD, Amy Hise, MD, and Shobha Krishnan, MD as new Members at Large.
About AMWA
The American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA) is an organization that functions at the local, national, and international level to advance women in medicine and improve women’s health. We achieve this by providing and developing leadership, advocacy, education, expertise and mentoring and through building strategic alliances. Founded in 1915, AMWA is the oldest multi-specialty organization of women physicians. As the vision and voice of women in medicine for over a century, AMWA empowers women to lead in improving health for all, within a model that reflects the unique perspective of women.
Contact: Eliza Chin, MD, MPH
Schaumburg, Illinois (May 2019)
executivedirector@amwa-doc.org
Media Contact
American Medical Women's Association ExecutiveDirector@amwa-doc.org 510-326-5395 1100 E Woodfield Road, Suite 350 http://amwa-doc.org
