The American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) presented its annual awards on April 30 during the Opening Session of the 2012 American Occupational Health Conference in Los Angeles, Calif. Four physicians and the authors of the paper judged to be an outstanding Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM) article were recognized for their contributions to the field of occupational and environmental medicine.

William S. Knudsen Award

Stuart M. Brooks, MD, Adjunct Professor, University of South Florida College of Public Health, Tampa, Fla., was recognized with the Knudsen Award, the highest honor in occupational and environmental medicine (OEM). This award, created in 1938 by William S. Knudsen, then President of General Motors and an advocate for worker health and safety, recognizes an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the field of OEM. Dr. Brooks was honored for his exemplary efforts in starting the first occupational medicine (OM) residency in Florida in 1992. Since that time he has tirelessly trained future OM physicians in the residency providing them with a 3-dimensional perspective of the field with a hands-on clinical component, academic course work, and a heavy emphasis on research. Through his dedicated efforts, the field of occupational medicine has been enhanced by the addition of several new board-certified occupational medicine physicians.

In addition, his own research focusing on occupational and environmental respiratory disorders, especially occupational asthma, irritant induced asthma, and reactive airways dysfunction syndrome, has significantly advanced the field of OM.

A member of ACOEM since 1974, Dr Brooks received his MD from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. He is certified in occupational medicine by the American Board of Preventive Medicine and certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in pulmonary medicine and internal medicine. Dr. Brooks served as a member of the JOEM Editorial Board and was a recipient of the 1983 Kammer Award for the article he co-authored, Diverse Profiles of Immunoreactivity in Toluene Diisocyanate (TDI) Asthma, published in JOEM in September 1981.

Reposted from the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine website.