Pictured: A bust of Dr. Wong resides in the JABSOM Health Sciences library.
Applications are due January 31, 2019 for the semi-annual Robert T. Wong, MD Lectureship at the University of Hawaiʻi (UH) John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM). Dr. Wong was a prominent Honolulu ophthalmologist and Professor of Ophthalmology. As President of the Honolulu County Medical Society in 1965, he led a group of community practitioners who vigorously supported the establishment of a medical school in Hawaiʻi. Dr. Wong was an outspoken and effective advocate of the school’s expansion to a four year school. He felt that the primary purpose of the medical school was to raise and maintain the high standard and quality of medical care in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific Basin.
About Dr. Wong and the Wong Lectureship
The Robert T. Wong, MD Lectureship was created to honor the life of a remarkable physician from Hilo, and to to enhance medical education for Hawaiʻi’s citizens. The lectureship allows nationally and internationally prominent persons involved in the medical field to come to Hawaiʻi and give the University of Hawaiʻi, the medical professions in Hawaiʻi, and other interested persons in the community an awareness of the latest in scientific research and techniques in the medical and health fields.
Dr. Robert Wong, an ophthalmologist, practiced medicine in Hilo for 60 years. He was one of 15 children when he was growing up on Hawaiʻi Island. He was born in 1911, the son of a father who had come from China to make a better life in Hawaiʻi. He attended Hilo High School and graduated from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 1932.
Graduated from the Jefferson School of Medicine at what is now the Thomas Jefferson University Sidney Kimmel Medical College in Philadelphia. He had an extraordinary life. He was attending a lecture when the bombing of Pearl Harbor began on December 7, 1941. He and others found working the next several days right where he was — on the campus of The Queen’s Hospital. After the war, he would care for patients of Hansen’s Disease on Molokaʻi and at Hale Mohalu on Oʻahu.
Dr. Wong was an early and vocal supporter of the founding of a medical school at the University of Hawaiʻi. “The primary reason for the existence of this medical school is to maintain a high standard and quality of medical care in the state of Hawaiʻi,” he famously said. His words have been proven true.
His two sons followed him in medicine. Dr. Stephen Wong teaches ophthalmology at Temple University and Bradley Wong, who completed his medical residency training at the University of Hawaiʻi is a surgeon in Honolulu, and a retired clinical professor of surgery at JABSOM.
Guidelines
Total funds available every year are expected to be at least $20,000. Of this, $6,000 will be earmarked for speakers in Surgery. The balance is available for other departments whose applications meet the criteria below. Applications should not exceed $5,000 per speaker.
The Wong Lectureship Committee will accept proposals on a rolling basis and meet twice a year (January and July) to consider applications for up to $5,000 each to support visiting lecturers.
Applicants from any medical school organizational department may request funds for conference and/or keynote speakers, CME speakers, and residency program visiting professors. Funds will not be awarded for convocation speakers.
The call for applications will be announced on the JABSOM website, by email to department chairs, and at Executive Committee meetings.
Payment will be awarded as a lump sum honorarium from which speaker will pay his/her own expenses and which will be subject to the speaker’s usual tax situation.
Criteria
Lecturers will be encouraged to present to multiple audiences and/or at JABSOM events that are open to the public in order to raise community awareness about the school and lecturers’ topics. Preference will be given to lecturers who have the ability to increase visibility of JABSOM in the larger community, leverage new funds for departments, or enhance hospital partnerships.
Contact: Email Elaine Evans, JABSOM Director of Development.