Pritzker News
Pritzker School of Medicine To Celebrate Annual White Coat Ceremony
Jeannette E. South-Paul, MD
The Pritzker School of Medicine’s annual White Coat Ceremony will be held at 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 16 in Rockefeller Memorial Chapel on the University of Chicago campus. The keynote speaker this year will be Dr. Jeannette E. South-Paul, Medical Director of the Community Health Services Division at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The ceremony will be immediately followed by a reception at Ida Noyes Hall.
The White Coat Ceremony is the event that marks the formal induction of 1st year medical students into the medical profession. It was a tradition that started at Pritzker and is now practiced at nearly every medical school across the country. The ceremony honors students’ lifetime commitment to blending knowledge, excellence, and compassion as physicians. During the ceremony students’ recite the Hippocratic Oath before their family, friends, and new colleagues.
Jeannette E. South-Paul, MD is the medical director of the Community Health Services Division at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. She also is Chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. In this position, she is the first woman and the first African-American to serve as the permanent chair of a department at the School of Medicine and one of a small number of African-American chairs in medical schools nationwide. Dr. South-Paul is widely recognized for her research on the biological, social, and behavioral factors associated with premenstrual syndrome, treatment strategies for osteoporosis, exercise and aerobic capacity during pregnancy, infant nutrition, and exercise-dependent physiologic function in obesity. She was recently honored in a special National Library of Medicine traveling exhibition entitled Changing the Face of Medicine: Celebrating America’s Women Physicians.
Beyond her family medicine interests, she also has an interest in socio-cultural issues in health care and health care in special populations. Dr. South-Paul is a widely recognized speaker and author on cultural competence in medical education, the impact of race, ethnicity and culture on health, cultural diversity and academic medicine, and the development of minority faculty. An active duty colonel in the United States Army, Dr. South-Paul came to the University of Pittsburgh from the F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) in Bethesda, Maryland where she served as Chair of the Department of Family Medicine, Vice President of Minority Affairs, and President of the Uniformed Services Academy of Family Physicians. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Dr. South-Paul is a former chair of the minority affairs section of the Association of American Medical Colleges. She is a diplomat of the American Board of Family Practice and a fellow of the American Academy of Physicians.
