Margaret Potter, J.D., M.S., professor of health policy and management at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, yesterday was awarded a 2013 Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH)/Pfizer Faculty Award at the ASPPH Annual Meeting.
The “Faculty Award for Excellence in Academic Public Health Practice” is a national award that honors graduate public health faculty who are notable for their teaching, practice and research excellence.
“This award is a great honor for me,” said Ms. Potter, also the associate dean for public health practice and the director for the Center for Public Health Practice at Pitt Public Health. “But it’s also a great way to recognize how valuable professional-practice relationships and experience are to public health education and research.”
The award was presented at the meeting in Boston during a session titled “Public Health Leadership for a Healthy America.” Ms. Potter’s selection for this award was based, in part, on her national leadership in translating public health scholarship to improve public health systems, thereby improving the general population’s health and well-being.
Ms. Potter has served as chair of the board of the Public Health Foundation, was a member of the Model Design Working Group for the National Health Security Preparedness Index project and currently chairs the Pennsylvania Advisory Committee on Public Health Laws.
She was an advisor to the Health Resources Services Administration in creating the Public Health Training Centers. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, she led the Center for Public Health Preparedness at Pitt Public Health with funding from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Later, she led a consensus panel that assessed the effectiveness of training health professionals for emergency preparedness and response.
Her practice-based research has spanned a broad range of topics, including public health systems, law and policy, and use of computational modeling in preparedness research.
Ms. Potter earned a J.D. from the Rutgers-Newark School of Law and a master’s degree in biomedical science information from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Watch Maggie's Acceptance Speech
11/04/2013