H. Dunbar Hoskins Jr., MD, will be the recipient of the 2009 Catalyst Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Glaucoma Research Foundation (GRF) acknowledging exemplary leadership in sustaining innovative research and education.
The Award will be presented as the centerpiece of GRF’s 31st Anniversary benefit celebration to be held Wednesday, January 28, 2009 at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. The announcement was made to guests at the Glaucoma Research Foundation’s (GRF) Annual Dinner following GRF’s Annual Meeting today.
“Dr. Hoskins has earned The Catalyst Award several times over,” said GRF President and CEO Thomas M. Brunner. “While in private practice, there was his visionary leadership as co-founder of GRF and the thoughtful guidance he provided during those all-important formative early years, along with co-founders Robert Shaffer, MD (1912-2007), and John Hetherington, MD. Certainly he is the personification of ‘catalyst’. And then, since January 1, 1993, there has also been his widely praised leadership as Executive Vice President of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.”
Previous recipients of The Catalyst Award have included Steven and Michele Kirsch, (whose contributions co-founding GRF’s Catalyst For a Cure – CFC – research consortium actually inspired the award itself); Allergan Chairman, President and CEO David E. I. Pyott (acknowledging Allergan’s long standing and unrivaled support of GRF’s mission); GRF board member F.T. Barr (whose Barr Foundation in Houston, TX, provided the cornerstone funding for the just completed CFC campaign, and now anchors the next phase of the CFC); and Alcon Chairman, President and CEO Cary Rayment (and Alcon’s particular commitment to innovative research).
The theme of the 31st Anniversary benefit – building on the traditional event title “Speeding the Cure. Spreading the Word – will be ‘Honoring the Physicians’,” Brunner reported. “Dr. Hoskins is the embodiment of the qualities we see reflected in so many of the gifted physicians dedicated to serving those with glaucoma.”
An internationally recognized glaucoma specialist, having authored or co-authored more than 70 publications and presented more than 300 invited lectures, Dr. Hoskins is a Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco. He has received numerous awards and honors including the Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003 and the A. Edward Maumenee award of the Pan American Association of Ophthalmology. He has held numerous other positions in ophthalmology, medicine and business. Among the highlights: Chairman of St. Mary’s Hospital and Medical Center San Francisco, Chairman of Mercy Services Corporation, founder and Chairman of Medem Corporation, Founding Director of the American Glaucoma Society, and Secretary-Treasurer of the Pan American Association of Ophthalmology, the American Eye Study Club and the American Glaucoma Society. He is a member of the International Council of Ophthalmology.
About the Glaucoma Research Foundation
Founded in 1978 and based in San Francisco, the Glaucoma Research Foundation is the nation’s most experienced foundation dedicated solely to glaucoma research and education.
Research programs include the precedent-setting Catalyst For a Cure consortium bringing together neuroscience and genetics laboratories from Johns Hopkins University, University of Utah, University of Washington, and Vanderbilt, to work in real time collaboration to speed the pace of discovery for a cure.
Education and outreach programs include the website glaucoma, the number one internet search choice for “glaucoma” and a national model of internet accessibility for the vision impaired, publications like Understanding and Living with Glaucoma, and its newsletter Gleams distributed at no cost three times a year to more than 75,000 households nationally.
Glaucoma Research Foundation