Michael M. McKee, MD, MPH, associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine and director of MDisability, is the 2024 recipient of the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award. The award, distributed by the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, recognizes University of Michigan Medical School (UMMS) faculty members and graduating medical students who are exemplars of humanism in patient care. McKee received the honor at the medical school graduation earlier this summer.
Participating medical schools, including UMMS, select one graduating medical student and faculty member each year for the award, which includes a certificate and check for up to $500. Recipients are also inducted as lifelong members of the Gold Humanism Honor Society.
“I’m both humbled and thrilled to receive this award,” McKee said. “It’s been my mission as a family medicine doctor to ensure that all patients, no matter their disability status, receive excellent and equitable health care. I’ve also made it my goal to train the medical students of the future to consider the needs of patients with disability, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing, or have conditions that may lead to health care inaccessibility and inequitable care.”
One of those now-graduated medical students trained and mentored by McKee -- Kate Panzer, MD -- nominated him for the award.
“I was so pleased that Dr. McKee received the Leonard Tow Humanism Award … as I also received the student version of the award,” Panzer said. “It was a wonderful way to end my time at UMMS and to honor Dr. McKee’s mentorship.”
Panzer, who is now a resident physician in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Virginia Health System, described McKee as a ‘trailblazer’ in advocating for the disability community in medicine.
Panzer was among the former MDisability interns who, as she described it, learned through McKee and other program-associated faculty, to make an impact with patients with disabilities through inclusive clinical care, disability health research, and community service.
She wrote in her nomination letter that through McKee’s fluency in ASL and the establishment of the Deaf Health Clinic at Michigan Medicine’s Dexter Family Health Center, he became a mentor to her with similar interests in deaf health advocacy.
She noted that McKee guided her through her first-author publication on lessons learned from the Deaf Health Clinic and that he, along with other students, clinicians, and interpreters, founded the first ASL medical language elective for UMMS students.
“He has gone above and beyond to support and advocate for this course and its students to spread understanding and awareness of caring for Deaf patients,” she wrote.
McKee has also collaborated with many students on other educational initiatives through MDisability, including a disability health elective; the inclusion of standardized patients with disabilities; and educational panels to teach students about the avenues to advocacy for patients with disabilities.
“Dr. McKee has been an incredible role model and mentor to me and many other medical students,” Panzer wrote. “His drive to motivate the next generation of disability advocates in medicine and to form community among like-minded students, residents, and faculty is simultaneously admirable, inspiring, and breathtaking."
McKee joins the late Professor Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA, also of the Department of Family Medicine, who received the humanism award in 2022 before his passing the following year.
The Gold Foundation, based in New Jersey, launched the Humanism in Medicine award in 1991 at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons. In 2003, through to a donation from The Tow Foundation, the awards became solely sponsored and administered by The Gold Foundation. The foundation champions humanism in healthcare, which members define as compassionate, collaborative and scientifically excellent care.
