The 2023 Special Recognition Award recipients are Elisa A. Hurley, PhD, and Geneviève Moineau, BSc, MD, FRCPC.
Elisa A. Hurley, PhD
PRIM&R (Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research)
On August 18, 2023, Elisa A. Hurley, PhD, stepped down as executive director of PRIM&R (Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research), a position she held for nine years at the nonprofit organization she had been part of since 2010.
Founded in 1974, PRIM&R works to ensure the highest ethical standards in research by providing education, membership, and other professional resources to the research and research-oversight community. This support is offered to individuals who work with human-subject protection programs, institutional review boards, animal-care and use programs, and institutional animal-care and use committees, as well as to the wider research community.
During a keynote speech at PRIM&R’s 2014 Advancing Ethical Research Conference, Hurley noted that “in its broadest sense, [ethics] explores the fundamental question of how we should regard and interact with other living things with whom we share a world.” And to her, “no question is more pressing, more important, or more central to what it is to be a human being.” With that outlook, during Dr. Hurley’s tenure at PRIM&R, the organization grew in staff size, programming, and national prominence.
During her time at the helm, PRIM&R also deepened its relationship with the AAMC and launched a major collaboration to develop a credentialing program for professionals who oversee conflict of interest management programs. Dr. Hurley also succeeded in combining two major educational offerings from PRIM&R into a single annual conference on the ethics of research.
When faced with the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic – which crystallized the importance of ethical research to advance science while spotlighting the potential shortcomings of research infrastructure pertaining to human subjects – Dr. Hurley skillfully guided the organization and an engaged research community of over 25,000 individuals. In March 2022, she told the Association of Clinical Research Professionals that the pandemic offered a huge opportunity to “harness public awareness” of biomedical research and to amplify trusted sources to make clinical trials more transparent and trustworthy.
An ethicist and moral philosopher by training, Dr. Hurley writes, lectures, and teaches on issues in human-subject protection and research ethics. Prior to leading PRIM&R, she served as an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Western Ontario, now Western University. There, her research and teaching focused on biomedical ethics and moral psychology.
Dr. Hurley received her BA, magna cum laude, in philosophy from Brown University in 1996 and a PhD in philosophy from Georgetown University in 2006. She was a Greenwall Post-Doctoral Fellow in bioethics and health policy at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics in Baltimore and Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics in Washington, D.C.
In recognition of Dr. Hurley’s significant contributions to the field of research ethics and her transformative leadership of the nation’s premier organization for research-oversight professionals, the AAMC Board of Directors confers this Special Recognition Award.
Geneviève Moineau, BSc, MD, FRCPC, ICD.D
World Federation for Medical Education (WFME)
On June 30, 2023, Geneviève Moineau, BSc, MD, FRCPC, concluded her term as president and CEO of the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC), a position she held for over 10 years. Representing Canada’s 17 faculties of medicine (i.e., medical schools), the AFMC’s mission is to achieve excellence in education, research, and care for the health of all Canadians through collective leadership, expertise, and advocacy.
Dr. Moineau is an internationally recognized expert on accreditation in medical education and has played a crucial role in AFMC’s advocacy for strategic physician-resource planning to meet Canada’s physician workforce needs.
Dr. Moineau joined the AFMC in 2011 as vice president of education, and she also served as secretary to the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools and the Committee on Accreditation of Continuing Medical Education; she assumed the role of president and CEO in 2013. Since then, she led the development of a memorandum of understanding with the AAMC, the American Medical Association, and the Canadian Medical Association on the Canadianization of medical school accreditation. She also initiated the transfer of the Canadian Graduation Questionnaire and all AAMC data on Canadians to the AFMC.
In addition, she supported the implementation of the AFMC Student Portal and negotiated a collaboration agreement with the Conférence Internationale des Doyens des Facultés de Médecine d’Expression Française, which represents over 140 French-speaking medical schools around the world.
In January 2023, Dr. Moineau became vice president for the World Federation for Medical Education (WFME). That organization, which was established by the World Medical Association and the World Health Organization, aims to “enhance the quality of medical education worldwide, with promotion of the highest scientific and ethical standards in medical education.”
In August 2023, Dr. Moineau was appointed as the chief medical workforce advisor for the government of Canada, where she will support the federal response to current health-workforce challenges so that all Canadians can access the quality care they need and deserve.
Dr. Moineau has served as a professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Ottawa and practices pediatric emergency medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. She has also served as associate dean of undergraduate medical education at the University of Ottawa; in that role, she led the faculty through a complete curriculum renewal, achieving an outstanding MD program accreditation as a result. She also served as pediatric clerkship director and pediatric emergency medicine program director.
Beloved by her students, Dr. Moineau has been nominated by graduating classes at Ottawa to be honorary class president on seven occasions. She also had a faculty of medicine leadership award established in her name and received the Faculty of Medicine 2010 Award of Distinction.
Dr. Moineau earned an MD from the University of Ottawa and completed a pediatric residency at the University of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.
The AAMC Board confers this Special Recognition Award in honor of Dr. Moineau’s unwavering dedication to advancing excellence in medical education and outcome-based accreditation.