The ASHP Board of Directors’ Award of Honor recognizes individuals outside the pharmacy discipline who have made extraordinary national or worldwide contributions to the health field. The 2021 Award of Honor recipient, announced during the 2021 ASHP Midyear Clinical Meeting & Exhibition, is Anthony S. Fauci, MD, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Bethesda, Maryland.
Dr. Fauci is an internationally acclaimed research leader and scientist whose work has improved health and healthcare in the United States and globally. He is an advocate for the engagement of pharmacists in critical public health initiatives, including on COVID-19 rapid response teams, and champions their role in the successful and equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr. Fauci is also the longtime chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He has made many contributions to basic and clinical research on the pathogenesis and treatment of immune-mediated and infectious diseases. He helped pioneer the field of human immunoregulation by making important basic scientific observations that underpin the current understanding of the regulation of the human immune response. In addition, Dr. Fauci is widely recognized for delineating the precise ways that immunosuppressive agents modulate the human immune response.
He developed effective therapies for formerly fatal inflammatory and immune-mediated diseases such as polyarteritis nodosa, granulomatosis with polyangiitis (formerly Wegener’s granulomatosis), and lymphomatoid granulomatosis. A 1985 Stanford University Arthritis Center Survey of the American Rheumatism Association membership ranked Dr. Fauci’s work on the treatment of polyarteritis nodosa and granulomatosis with polyangiitis among the most important advances in patient management in rheumatology over the previous 20 years.
