Talk to the Veterans Crisis Line now
An official website of the United States government
The Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) honored three of VA's health systems researchers at its annual meeting in Hollywood, Florida from May 14-17, 2025:
Amy Justice, MD, PhD
Amy Justice, MD, PhD, a clinical epidemiologist and staff physician at the West Haven VA Medical Center, professor of medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, and professor of public health policy at the Yale School of Public Health, received the 2025 John M. Eisenberg National Award for Career Achievement in Research.
One of SGIM’s highest honors, the award is named after the late Dr. John M. Eisenberg, an influential leader, investigator, and advocate for research in general medicine. It honors senior researchers whose work has significantly impacted patient care, research, medical education, and health policy. In their letter notifying Dr. Justice of the award, SGIM’s selection committee commended her “research accomplishments in the area of care for people living with HIV [and] multi-morbidity” and her “strong commitment to mentorship and advancing the careers of general internists.”
Over a distinguished career, Dr, Justice has published more than 600 peer-reviewed manuscripts, and has presented her work at the United Nations, the International AIDS Society, the Royal Medical College in London, the White House, Congress, and the National Institute of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. One of the first investigators to devise large national research cohorts based on data from VA’s electronic health record, national databases, patient surveys, and tissue repositories, Dr. Justice led development and validation of the Veterans Aging Cohort Study (VACS) Index, which estimates the risk of all-cause mortality for people with and without HIV infection. She also developed the HIV Symptom Index, a questionnaire designed to evaluate the severity of HIV-related symptoms and their impact on quality of life. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she called on this experience to lead the development and validation of the Veterans Health Administration COVID-19 (VACO) Index, a screening tool that estimates an individual patient’s risk of all-cause mortality within 30 days after a COVID-19 infection. Both the VACS and VACO indices have been validated outside VA, in multiple studies across North America and Europe.
“When I was a young investigator, I listened with rapt attention to the talks given by the recipients of the John Eisenberg Award, including John Eisenberg himself,” said Dr. Justice in her May 15 acceptance speech. “It is the honor of my lifetime to receive it.”
Amy Farkas, MD
Amy Farkas, MD, a primary care provider for women Veterans at the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center in Milwaukee and an associate professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), received the Scholarship in Medical Education Award, which honors original work to improve medical education on a national level. Dr. Farkas was selected in recognition of her “extensive body of scholarship in Women’s Health education, gender equity, and mentorship,” which “has led to deep and meaningful contributions to medical education.”
Dr. Farkas is a leader in clinical women’s health at the Milwaukee VA, where she created and runs the breast cancer risk assessment clinic. From the early days of her career, she has focused on the role of mentorship for career development, especially for women, medical students, and those under-represented in the medical profession. She has developed consensus guidelines for women’s health education in internal medicine, and has presented nationally on women’s health topics.
At MCW, Dr. Farkas serves as an associate program director for the internal medicine residency program overseeing women’s health education. Her program evaluation work has demonstrated the impact of educational initiatives administered by VA’s Office of Women’s Health (OWH), including its flagship program, the Women’s Health Mini-Residency, which trains hundreds of VA primary care providers and nurses each year in care tailored for women. Her papers, which demonstrate a correlation between this work and provider retention and medical knowledge, are often cited as justification for continuing these programs. She recently led a national educational needs assessment to inform future OWH education initiatives.
In notifying Dr. Farkas of her selection, the SGIM committee wrote: “The impact of your work, as well as your successful mentorship in educational scholarship and demonstration of educational leadership, is outstanding.”
Jeffrey Kullgren, MD, MPH
Jeffrey Kullgren, MD, MPH, a staff physician with the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, an investigator at HSR’s Center for Clinical Management Research, and an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan, received the Best Published Research Paper of the Year Award for “Using Behavioral Economics to Reduce Low-Value Care Among Older Adults,” published in JAMA Internal Medicine in January 2024.
Dr. Kullgren’s team conducted a randomized clinical trial to investigate whether a behavioral economic intervention called “Committing to Choose Wisely” could reduce low-value care – tests, treatments, or procedures that provide little or no benefit to patients and may even cause harm or waste resources – among older adults. The study found that a combination of clinician commitments to Choosing Wisely guidelines and point-of-care nudges can reduce low-value care in clinical situations. For example, the intervention encouraged doctors in the study to re-evaluate their older patients’ diabetes medications, and, when appropriate, reduce or discontinue them.
The study, which suggests healthcare delivery system interventions can achieve greater efficiency while preserving clinician and patient autonomy, illustrates a focus of Dr. Kullgren’s research: Using surveys and qualitative methods to identify opportunities for better decision making, he and his colleagues develop innovative approaches to improve the value of healthcare.
SGIM’s Best Research Paper of the Year Award highlights outstanding scholarship that advances generalist research. In recognizing Dr. Kullgren’s work, the committee wrote that it “was particularly impressed with the rigor of the study design and felt it addressed an important question that is relevant to general internal medicine,” and that the design of the study “was well-adapted to real-world settings and tested an intervention that could be scalable to primary care practices and disseminated broadly.”
