Distinguished Clinician Awards
The 2009 Distinguished Clinician Award winners are:
Damian Augustyn, MD, AGAF
California Pacific Medical Center
San Francisco, CA
Damian Augustyn, MD, AGAF, receives the AGA Distinguished Clinician Award for his commitment and excellence in patient care.
Dr. Augustyn has distinguished himself as a leader in his community and the AGA and as a clinician in private practice. He is as respected for the compassion, sensitivity and dedication he shows to patients under his care as he is for his knowledge, clinical skills and consulting expertise. Dr. Augustyn has been a role model for practitioners throughout his career and is just as committed to education activities through his teaching and leadership skills.
Dr. Augustyn is dedicated to AGA, currently serving as the treasurer-secretary, chair of the Finance Committee and a member of the Governing Board. He is well-respected and admired by his colleagues for his wisdom, judgment and fairness in deliberations. He has also served as chair of the Practice Management and Economics Committee and chair of the Task Force for the Practice Management Committee.
In addition to his private practice, Dr. Augustyn is chief of the medical staff and chair of the Medical Executive Committee of California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. He was the chief of gastroenterology and hepatology at California Pacific for ten years before becoming the chief of staff. He also is the managing partner of Pacific Internal Medicine Associates and an associate clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. Dr. Augustyn is a member of the board of directors of the San Francisco Endoscopy Center, PanMed Enterprises and Anthem-Wellpoint-Blue Cross Insurance Company and serves as chief financial officer and treasurer of PRF Medical Malpractice Insurance Companies. He has previously served on the boards of The Community Health Resource Center, Brown and Toland Medical Group, the San Francisco Medical Society, the California Federation of Digestive Disease Societies, and the Northern California Society of Gastroenterology.
Dr. Augustyn received his bachelor’s degree with honors from Stanford University, CA, and his doctor of medicine from Harvard Medical School, Boston. He served his internship and residency at the University of Colorado Medical Center, Denver, and his senior residency and fellowship in gastroenterology at the University of California Medical Center, San Francisco, which he has been serving since completing his fellowship.
Lin Chang, MD, AGAF
David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles, CA
The AGA presents Lin Chang, MD, AGAF, with the Distinguished Clinician Award in recognition of her achievements as a clinical academician.
She is a professor of medicine-in-residence in the division of digestive diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she is co-director and head of the clinical program for the Center for Neurobiology of Stress in the division of digestive diseases. Additionally, Dr. Chang is the co-director of CURE: Digestive Diseases Research Center, Human Studies Core and the associate director of the UCLA General Clinical Research Center.
Dr. Chang is known worldwide for her clinical research in the area of gender-related differences in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), functional MRI and the inter-relations between IBS and fibromyalgia. She is an insightful, caring clinician who works with each patient to assess the physical, social and psychological aspects of their symptoms and disease to ensure their improved health. These same traits translate to her enthusiasm for teaching and research. Dr. Chang has been invited to lecture at a variety of institutions and medical meetings and has the ability to make complicated concepts understandable while connecting with her audience. She is uniquely able to weave science and patient care-related matters to further understanding of diseases.
Dr. Chang belongs to several medical organizations. She serves on the Rome Foundation Board, is the chair of the Rome III education committee and is responsible for the development of the Rome Foundation AGA Lectureship, which began in 2008 during Digestive Disease Week®. She is the president-elect of the Functional Brain Gut Research Group, which is affiliated with the Neurogastroenterology and Motility Section of the AGA Institute Council.
Dr. Chang graduated with her bachelor’s of science from UCLA and her doctor of medicine from UCLA School of Medicine, where she served her internship, residency, research fellowship and clinical fellowship.
Robert Craig, MD
The Feinberg School of Medicine
Northwestern University, Chicago, IL
Robert Craig, MD, is awarded the AGA Distinguished Clinician Award for demonstrating the characteristics of a distinguished clinical leader in gastroenterology.
Dr. Craig is a professor of medicine at Northwestern University School of Medicine, Chicago and is in private practice. Despite his busy and time-pressured clinical practice, he is devoted to meaningful research, which resulted in a private foundation grant from the Broad Foundation to support clinical research on the role of stem cell transplant in intractable Crohn’s disease. He is known for an exceptional clinical aptitude, dedication to improving the field of gastroenterology and a deep compassion for improving the lives of his patients and trainees. Dr. Craig is also a humanitarian who began a community health clinic to provide free colorectal cancer screening to low income, uninsured patients in the Chicago area.
He is a member of numerous medical organizations, and has served as the chair of the AGA Nominating Committee and clinical practice section as well as a member of the Patient Care Committee and an abstract reviewer in the intestinal section. Dr. Craig has won a number of awards including the 2007 Dean’s Lifetime Service Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Northwestern Gastroenterology Alumni Award for Excellence. He has been awarded the Outstanding Teacher’s Award from Northwestern four times as well as the distinguished service award. Dr. Craig also has been named outstanding gastroenterologist by Chicago Magazine three times.
Dr. Craig earned his bachelor’s of art degree from Colgate University in New York and his medical degree from Northwestern University School of Medicine, where he completed his internship, residency and gastroenterology fellowship. He has served as the chief of gastroenterology at both Northwestern and the VA Lakeside Medical Center as well as the director of nutritional support service for both medical centers. Dr. Craig was the vice chief of staff and the chief of staff for the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago
Stephen E. Goldfinger, MD
Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA
Massachusetts General Hospital
The AGA honors Stephen E. Goldfinger, MD, with the Distinguished Clinician Award for his more than 40 years of contributions in direct patient care and his impact on the field of gastroenterology.
Dr. Goldfinger is celebrated for his diagnostic acumen and clinical judgment in the management of patients, for many of whom he has served as primary physician for decades. He has an ability to sort through complex diagnostic challenges and is often called upon by colleagues in New England and beyond for assistance in diagnosing their toughest clinical cases. In the early 1970s, he reported his discovery of colchicine as an effective treatment for familial Mediterranean fever (FMF), which had heretofore been unresponsive to all attempted therapies. When he received the Harry Heller Award for this achievement at the first international meeting on FMF in Jerusalem in 1997, his contribution was lauded as saving thousands of lives. Colchicine remains the standard of therapy to this day.
Dr. Goldfinger is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston, and a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. He has a passion for medical education that has led to his central role in the development of educational programs and leadership in a broad array of educational endeavors. For the past 35 years, Dr. Goldfinger has organized and directed Harvard Medical School's annual postgraduate course in gastroenterology, attended by thousands of gastroenterologists from the U.S. and beyond. Dr. Goldfinger served as faculty dean of Harvard Medical School's department of continuing medical education for more than 25 years. He co-founded the Harvard Medical School Health Letter in 1975 and served as its chairman until 1991, when it became the Harvard Health Letter, of which he was editor-in-chief until 1999. He directed the Harvard Health Publications Group for many years. The Massachusetts General Hospital gastroenterology unit established the Stephen E. Goldfinger Teaching Award, which is presented annually as the highest honor for teaching by a faculty member.
Dr. Goldfinger served on the AGA Teaching and Education Committee. He has been a director and secretary-treasurer of the American Board of Internal Medicine, and also was governor of the Massachusettes chapter of the American College of Physicians. He is a member of the American Clinical and Climatological Association.
Dr. Goldfinger received his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in philosophy from Princeton University, NJ, and his medical degree from Columbia University, College of Physicians & Surgeons, New York. He served his internship and residency, including chief residency, at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Goldfinger then assumed a faculty appointment at Harvard Medical School, and has been serving both institutions since 1967. From 1962 to 1964, he was a clinical associate at the National Institutes of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, Bethesda, MD.
