Dear HHS employees,
Please see the below call for award nominations and share with your networks. Both awards are sponsored by the Federal Asian Pacific American Council (FAPAC) with a deadline of March 15, 2020.
- FAPAC calls for nominations to the 2020 Dr. Howard K. Koh Award for Excellence in Leadership at HHS. This award recognizes an individual who exemplifies outstanding leadership, service integrity, and excellence, and has significantly contributed to the mission of the HHS. The nominee needs to be a member of the Asian American/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (AANHPI) community and a current HHS employee. The recipient receives a 1-year honorary FAPAC membership, a $300 honorarium, and will be recognized during the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Celebration in May 2020. Please submit a nomination package, which includes the nominee’s curriculum vitae and a narrative (< 1 page) that supports the candidate’s nomination. The evaluation by the nomination committee will be based on the nominee’s professional development and achievements, and involvement and commitment in leadership activities at HHS. The nomination submission deadline is March 15th, 2020.
This FAPAC outstanding leadership award is named in honor of Howard Kyongju Koh, MD, MPH. He was the 14th Assistant Secretary for Health (ASH) at HHS from 2009 to 2014 where he directed 12 core public health offices, including the Office of the Surgeon General and the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, 10 Regional Health Offices across the nation, and 10 Presidential and Secretarial advisory committees. Dr. Koh implemented many programs related to minority health, adolescent health, women’s health, HIV/AIDS, chronic diseases, health promotion, disease prevention, and reduction of health disparities. He made significant contributions by leading the development and implementation of the following four initiatives: the first HHS Agency Plan for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (AANHPI), the HHS Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, the National Stakeholder Strategy for Achieving Health Equity and the HHS Action Plan for the Prevention, Care, and Treatment of Viral Hepatitis. As a champion for achieving health equity and addressing health disparities, Dr. Koh held regular meetings with AANHPI community leaders several times a year. In those substantive exchanges, issues such as language access, immigration status and health insurance coverage and others were discussed. As a result, major partnerships between community leaders and various agencies within HHS were established. Dr. Koh provided access, partnership, and a well-versed familiarity to these issues, in order that HHS could address them. Dr. Koh is currently the Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard Kennedy School.
- FAPAC calls for nominations to the 2020 Dr. Francisco S. Sy Award for Excellence in Mentorship at HHS. This award recognizes an HHS employee who has provided exceptional mentorship to others from the Asian American/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (AANHPI) community, fostering their growth and development. The Recipient is an exemplary display of Leadership, Service Integrity, and Excellence. The recipient receives a 1-year FAPAC honorary membership, a $300 honorarium and will be recognized during the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Celebration in May 2020. Please submit a nomination package, which includes the nominee’s curriculum vitae and a narrative (< 1 page) that supports the candidate’s nomination. The evaluation by the nomination committee will be based on the nominee’s professional development and achievements, and involvement and commitment to mentorship activities at HHS. The nomination submission deadline is March 15th, 2020.
This FAPAC outstanding mentorship award is named in honor of Francisco Santos Sy, MD, DrPH. He was a Senior Health Scientist at CDC from 2000 to 2004 and Senior Extramural Program Director at NIH from 2004 to 2016. At CDC, Dr. Sy was a team leader in the Program Evaluation Branch in the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention. He led the CDC SARS Community Outreach Team in Asian communities in the US in 2003. He was the founding President of the Association of Asian Pacific Islander Employees of CDC and ATSDR (AAPIECA). At NIH, Dr. Sy developed and managed the NIMHD Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) with its unique three phases; a 3-year planning grant, followed by a competitive 5-year intervention grant and a 3- year dissemination grant. He wrote the justifications for adding sexual and gender minorities (SGM) in the list of health disparities populations which was approved by the NIH Director and Secretary of HHS. To enhance the diversity of the biomedical workforce, Dr. Sy developed the initial concept papers for two national initiatives: Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) and the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN). He worked with Dr. Howard Koh in the development of the first HHS Agency Plan for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in 2011. This plan has served as a blueprint for HHS ever since and is revisited annually by the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (WHIAAPI). He served as the HHS Liaison with the WHIAAPI. When he was elected President of the NIH Asian Pacific American Organization (APAO), he set developing mentoring programs as the highest priority during his term. Dr. Sy is currently a Professor and Chair, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the School of Community Health Sciences in the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV).
Important Notice: Under the ethics regulations at 5 C.F.R. § 2635.204(d), due to the amount of the award and its cash component, any recipient of one of the awards must receive written approval from his or her organization or staff-division ethics office before the award can be accepted.
Please send nomination packages or questions for the awards to the Co-Chairs of FAPAC NIH Award Committee:
Dr. Xujing Wang, Xujing.wang@nih.gov, 301.451.2862
Dr. Jean Yuan, xin.yuan@nih.gov, (301) 496-9350
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