Skip to main content

2015 Recipients of South Carolina AHEC Family Medicine Awards

Halford Award for Leadership in Humane Education

Presented to Patricia Witherspoon, MD


Dr. David Garr, South Carolina AHEC Executive Director;
Dr. Patricia Witherspoon, Halford Award Recipient;
Dr. Chuck Carter, Palmetto Health Family Medicine Residency Training
Program Director

 The South Carolina AHEC is pleased to announce that Patricia Wilson Witherspoon, MD, FAAFP, is this year’s recipient of the Halford Award.  Since 1998, Dr. Witherspoon has been an integral part of the Palmetto Health Family Medicine Residency Program. She is currently serving as the Co-Medical Director and Associate Professor for the USC School of Medicine Department of Family and Preventive Medicine. In these roles she has committed herself to serving her community and providing excellent medical student teaching and resident mentoring. Her experience as a leader and role model are acknowledged in the many other recognitions she has received, including the USC Social Justice Award (2011), USC Women’s Health Award (2011), and DHEC Diabetes Champion of the Year (2010).

The Halford Award is presented to a Family Medicine residency training program faculty member in recognition of outstanding leadership in providing humane education. The award is named for Dr. James Halford, who was the founding director of the AnMed Health Family Medicine Residency Program. Award winners demonstrate a caring attitude and respect for patients, residents and students; value human dignity; and demonstrate a passion and joy for teaching, learning and working with others and participating in community service activities.

South Carolina AHEC Excellence in Family Medicine Education Award 

Presented to Scott Bragg, PharmD




The Sixth Annual South Carolina AHEC Excellence in Family Medicine Education Award was presented to Scott Bragg, PharmD, BCSP, with the Trident Health/MUSC Family Medicine Residency Program. Since 2013, Dr. Bragg served as assistant professor for the South Carolina College of Pharmacy Clinical Pharmacy and Outcomes Sciences as well as the MUSC Department of Family Medicine. Dr. Bragg is involved with the I3 Collaborative, a collaboration of residency programs across South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Florida. In his role as assistant professor, he has taught applied health systems and clinical assessment labs to pharmacy students, interprofessional courses on transforming healthcare to interprofessional groups of students at MUSC, and diabetes management workshops as part of the MUSC Family Medicine clerkship. He has been an integral part of the development and participation in a quality improvement and research curriculum for the residency program and implemented a longitudinal pharmacotherapy curriculum in addition to specific pharmacotherapy-related objectives for each rotation. Residents who have worked with Dr. Bragg speak highly of the significant effect he has had on the program during his two years there, including his consistent dedication to family medicine, enthusiasm for teaching and the impact he has made on pharmacy students, medical students and residents.

This award was established to honor a non-physician teacher for excellence in resident education, with demonstrated skills in teaching, curriculum development, mentoring, research, and leadership in education.  

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Marchek Siblings Stay Connected With Upstate AHEC Through Academic Journey

 A pair of siblings from Greer are giving back to current Upstate AHEC Health Careers students after completing the program themselves. Alex Marchek, MD is in his first year as a family medicine resident at Prisma Health Seneca. His younger sister by two years, Anna Marchek, is a second-year medical student at Edward Via College of Medicine (VCOM) Carolinas. “My mom likes to say she did good,” Anna joked. “Both of her kids are going to be doctors. She went two-for-two.” Anna (left) and Alex (right) Marchek are pictured with Nita Donald, Executive Director of Upstate AHEC. While Alex and Anna have both chosen to pursue medicine as a career, their interest in healthcare developed differently. Alex describes his discovery of health sciences as a slow realization. “It was definitely something that was on my radar really young,” said Alex. “My parents will say when I was six years old, I was talking about doing something in medicine. I had some really great science teachers in elementar...
Read more

Pee Dee AHEC Clinical Placements Help Students See Challenges – and Opportunities – of Rural Primary Care

  Third-year medical student Omar Guerrero didn’t find his passion for a career in healthcare until he began shadowing health professionals as an undergraduate student. “I just knew that I really loved science and working with my hands,” said Guerrero, who double-majored in Public Health and Cellular & Molecular Biology while at the University of South Florida. It all clicked for him once he was able to observe physicians in their encounters with patients. “I saw there was a real need for Spanish-speaking physicians,” said Guerrero. “There’s a lot of disconnect between providers and Spanish-speaking patients and I thought that was definitely an area that I could make a difference in.” Now in his third year at A.T. Still University’s School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona, Guerrero is doing a clinical placement at Beaufort-Jasper-Hampton Comprehensive Health Services, Inc. in Richland. Guerrero was connected with Pee Dee AHEC and their Health Professions Student (HPS) program...
Read more

Simulation Training Prepares Students for Rural Primary Care

Since its inception in 2021, South Carolina AHEC’s Simulation Education Training (SET) has remained a favorite experience amongst health professions students statewide. Pee Dee AHEC Scholars and other health professions students pose for the camera during a simulation Since its inception in 2021, South Carolina AHEC’s Simulation Education Training (SET) has remained a favorite experience amongst health professions students statewide. SET uses simulation-based technology to expose students to clinical environments and scenarios that mirror what providers experience in rural, medically-underserved communities. “A lot of simulations are emergent or hospital-based and students are usually being graded as a formal assessment when they participate,” said SC AHEC Curriculum Coordinator Dawn Leberknight, who was heavily involved in the development of the initiative. “We tried to make [SET] more informal to expose students to simulations before it’s high stakes, and then to really focus on rura...
Read more