Dr. Sheryl Heron Receives Award For Her Work Addressing Domestic Violence
ATLANTA -- Sheryl Heron, MD, MPH, assistant professor in the Department
of Emergency Medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine, was
recently honored with the third annual Hearts With Hope Award for her
dedication and commitment to addressing domestic violence and its devastating
impact on families, the workplace and society. The award is sponsored
by the Atlanta-based Partnership Against Domestic Violence, which supports
women and their families in their efforts to live violence free.
"I am deeply honored and
humbled to receive this award," said Dr. Heron, who is also Assistant
Residency Program director in the Department of Emergency Medicine at
Emory. "I do not see it as my award but rather a testimony to the women
and children who suffer from domestic violence and the patients we care
for daily in the emergency department who are living with domestic violence.
Hearts With Hope should be a reminder for all of us to search our hearts
and give hope when caring for our patients, who could be our mothers,
our sisters, our aunts, our friends. Domestic violence is everyone’s
concern and because we all have a heart, we should have hope that we
can do something about it."
A nationally recognized speaker,
Dr. Heron has focused her efforts on domestic violence, specifically
intimate partner violence, in her research and education of medical
professionals. She was appointed in 2002 to the Georgia Commission on
Family Violence, where she worked with a multidisciplinary team of professionals
to craft physicians’ guidelines for identifying and caring for patients
who are suffering from domestic violence.
Dr. Heron has also served
as a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on the Training
Needs of Health Professionals to Respond to Family Violence. The committee
was charged with examining existing curricula for health professionals
on family violence and improving current efforts to foster health professionals’
knowledge and skills. The committee, in a report published in 2002,
entitled Confronting Chronic Neglect: The Education and Training of
Health Professionals on Family Violence, offered several recommendations
on how the nation should proceed to educate and train its health professionals
on this issue.
Cathy Willis Spraetz, executive
director of Partnership Against Domestic Violence, praised Dr. Heron
for her commitment and passion. "She is one of those rare individuals
who not only ‘talks the talk,’ but more importantly, ‘walks the walk,’"
Spraetz said. "She is a passionate advocate who inspires her students,
colleagues, and audience to want to do more for domestic violence survivors."
Dr. Heron is a board member
of the Women’s Resource Center to End Domestic Violence, secretary of
the health ministry at Antioch Baptist Church, and graduate of Leadership
Atlanta, Class of 2002. In October 2002, she was recognized in Georgia
Trend magazine among a list of "40 under 40", which includes 40 up-and-coming
leaders in the state, and was recently nominated as chair-elect of the
National Medical Association’s Emergency Medicine section.
Dr. Heron earned her undergraduate
degree at Tufts University, her MPH from Hunter College, and her medical
degree from Howard University. She completed her residency training
at the Martin Luther King, Jr./Charles Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles
and completed an Injury Control Fellowship at Emory’s Rollins School
of Public Health before becoming a fulltime faculty member in 1996.
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