We are proud to introduce AMWA’s newest Fellows, Deborah Kwolek, MD, FACP, NCMP, FAMWA and Olapeju Simoyan, MD, MPH, BDS, FAAFP, FASAM, FAMWA. Drs. Kwolek and Simoyan were inducted as Fellows on March 25, during the AMWA Gala celebrating our 108th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.
Deborah Kwolek, MD, FACP, NCMP, FAMWA
Dr. Deborah Kwolek is a nationally-recognized leader in women’s health and sex and gender-based medical education and clinical care. She is the founding lead of the Women’s Health and Sex and Gender Medicine Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, whose mission is excellence in Sex and Gender Based Education, Clinical Care, Research, Advocacy and Leadership. Dr Kwolek is co-editor of the textbook, Sex- and Gender- based Women’s Health: A practical guide for primary care.
Dr. Kwolek served on the steering committee of the national Women’s Preventive Services Initiative (WPSI) which is sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services in cooperation with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and is Chair of the Society of General Internal Medicine’s Women and Medicine Commission. She serves as the Co-Chair of the American Medical Women’s Association/ Sex and Gender Health Collaborative’s mentoring committee which oversees a national student project to bring women’s health and sex and gender medicine more fully into medical curricula. Dr. Kwolek is the recipient of the 2023 iGIANT Champion award for outstanding contributions to gendered innovation and design, and is committed to mentoring students, trainees and junior faculty with the goal of improving the health of patients through innovations in medical education.
Olapeju Simoyan, MD, MPH, BDS, FAAFP, FASAM, FAMWA
Dr. Olapeju Simoyan is Medical Director of New Directions Treatment Services, Professor in psychiatry at Drexel University College of Medicine, and an Adjunct faculty member at Penn State University College of Medicine. Prior to her current position, she was the Founding Medical and Executive Director of Research at Caron Treatment Centers and the program director for the addiction medicine fellowship at Geisinger Marworth. She was also a founding faculty member at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine.
Dr. Simoyan has contributed to international public health education as a Fulbright specialist in Nigeria and an Erasmus Mundus scholar in France and the U.K. and has volunteered on medical mission projects in Nigeria and Haiti. She served on the editorial board of Medical Education Online, on the Publications Council of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and on the addiction medicine sub-board of the American Board of Preventive Medicine and was the Founding Editor in Chief of Black Diamonds and Silver Linings, literary journals published by Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine and Reading Hospital, respectively. Dr. Simoyan is a recipient of the Humanism in Medicine Award from the Arnold Gold Foundation and the Award of Excellence in Humanitarian Services from Pro-Health International.
As a member of the AMWA’s Music and Medicine committee, Dr. Simoyan curated a photographic exhibit featuring prominent women in medicine and has contributed to many other performances and projects. She has combined her interests in writing and photography in several books, including The Amazing World of Butterflies, Living Foolproof, and most recently, Transformation and Recovery, a workbook for patients with addictions and other behavioral disorders.
About AMWA’s Fellowship Program
AMWA’s Fellowship Program serves to recognize and honor distinguished members of AMWA who have accomplished outstanding achievements in science, medicine or academia and who have demonstrated meaningful leadership involvement in support of AMWA’s mission and vision at the branch or national level. The Program was founded by AMWA Past President, Dr. Farzanna Haffizulla, as one of AMWA’s Centennial Initiatives. The first class of fellows was inducted at AMWA’s Centennial Meeting in 2015. AMWA Fellowship applications are reviewed quarterly and candidates awarded fellowship will be invited to our fellowship induction ceremony at AMWA’s Annual Meeting.
Learn About AMWA Fellowship Program & Meet AMWA Fellows
