American Liver Foundation Chair Dr. Paul Berk Honored With George Jamieson Humanitarian Award

American Liver Foundation
Thursday, 20 May 2004

Paul D. Berk, MD, was awarded the American Liver Foundation's most distinguished honor, the George Jamieson Humanitarian Award, on May 1, 2004 at the Foundation's Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. The George Jamieson Award is the Foundation's highest form of recognition, and is given to an individual who has made an exceptional contribution, over many years of service, to the American Liver Foundation and to the community affected by liver disease. Dr. Berk has consistently demonstrated strong leadership in furthering the Foundation's mission to prevent, treat and cure hepatitis and other liver diseases.

Paul D. Berk is an international leader in liver disease. He graduated with high honors from Swarthmore College in 1959. After being honored as a Fulbright Scholar in mathematics at University of St. Andrews in Scotland, he received his MD from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1964. Dr. Berk was subsequently a Clinical Associate at the National Cancer Institute and a Medical Resident and Hematology Fellow at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center.

Currently the Chairman of the American Liver Foundation's Board of Directors, Dr. Berk has served in many other senior leadership positions, including Chief of the Section on Disease of the Liver at the National Institutes of Health, President of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), and Editor in Chief of the premier journal devoted to the liver, Hepatology. He is an energetic and effective champion of liver disease research, whose effective lobbying in Washington on behalf of ALF has changed policy at the national level. Most recently, he played a major role in a successful joint lobbying effort by ALF and AASLD to create a discrete Liver Diseases Research Branch within the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases. This administrative restructuring will bring greater attention and resources to liver disease research.

Dr. Berk is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, and the American Clinical and Climatological Association, and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Gastroenterology, and the Royal Society of Medicine (London). He maintains a busy clinical practice at Mount Sinai, while directing a research laboratory focused on bilirubin metabolism, jaundice, and the role of fatty acid transport mechanisms in obesity and fatty liver, which has been NIH-funded for a quarter century.

Dr. Berk has been an effective mentor. Many of his former Fellows occupy professorial positions or chair departments at institutions in the United States and abroad. "Paul has trained many of today's leaders in the field of liver disease around the world", states ALF President and CEO Alan P. Brownstein. "It has been an honor for the American Liver Foundation to have his leadership and guidance. Dr. Berk has spent much of his life helping others not only through his scientific and clinical skills, but also by his leadership and devotion to ALF. He has been an outstanding asset to the Foundation in the past, and will continue to be so in the years ahead."

For more information, or to contact American Liver Foundation, see their website at: www.liverfoundation.org