Lawrence Green Awarded Sedgwick Memorial Medal for Distinguished Service in Public Health

Lawrence Green, MPH, DrPH, will receive the Sedgwick Memorial Medal for Distinguished Service in Public Health, the oldest and most prestigious award bestowed by the American Public Health Association (APHA). 

The award will recognize Green, a retired professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at UC San Francisco, for his distinguished career in bridging theory and research in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of programs and policies in public health.

Green’s work in innovating widely used models of planning and evaluation has shaped the field of public health nationally and globally. He is known for developing the PRECEDE-PROCEED planning framework for addressing both the behavioral and environmental changes necessary to promote population health.

A career in both academia and government has led Green to advocate for more “practice-based evidence” – research originating from the realities and needs of public health practice rather than from theory.

Green joined UCSF in 2005 and has held faculty positions at the School of Medicine, the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, and the UCSF Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center.

He received his degrees in public health from UC Berkeley and has served on the faculties of Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, the University of British Columbia, and Emory University.

In addition, Green has held numerous leadership roles in government and foundations that allowed him to see the realities, pressures and limitations of implementing ideas into practice. These include director of the Office of Science and Extramural Research in the Public Health Practice Program Office of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 2001 to 2004, director of the CDC-World Health Organization Collaboration Center on Global Tobacco Control from 1999 to 2001, vice president and director of the National Health Promotion Program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation from 1988 to 1991, and director of the Office of Health Information and Health Promotion in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 1979 to 1981.

The Sedgwick Memorial Medal, given annually for distinguished service and advancement of public health knowledge and practice, was established in 1929 in honor of former APHA president William Thompson Sedgwick. 

This year’s award will be presented Nov. 1 during APHA’s 2016 Annual Meeting and Expo in Denver.

Philip R. Lee, MD, professor emeritus of social medicine, won the Sedgwick Memorial Medal in 2000.

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