American Medical Association Foundation Announces the 2013 Excellence in Medicine Award Recipient: Rebecca Morsch, MD, MPH is the 2013 recipient of the Dr. Nathan Davis International Award in Medicine

Teaching Village Childbirth Class to the Hewa Tribe with colleague Dr. Stephanie Doenges, Enga Province, Papua New Guinea, June, 2012. Image credit: AMA Foundation

Washington, DC, February 11, 2013:  Rebecca Morsch, MD, MPH will be awarded the prestigious Dr. Nathan Davis International Award in Medicine at the 2013 Excellence in Medicine Awards ceremony to be held at the Grand Ballroom of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, DC on the evening of February 11, 2013.  She is one of three recipients of this prestigious award this year.   The award is named after the founder of the American Medical Association, Dr. Nathan Davis.

Rebecca Morsch, MD, MPH, is the Director of the Community Based Health Care program of the Nazarene Health Ministry in Papua New Guinea, which trains community-chosen Community Health Volunteers and Village Birth Attendants in one of the United Nation’s designated Least Developed Countries. Dr. Morsch’s training curriculum focuses on prevention and provides culturally-sensitive health education about childbirth and childcare, hygiene, waste management, injury prevention and sexually transmitted diseases. 

Dr. Morsch also helped organize Papua New Guinea’s array of community-based health organizations into the Effective Development Empowering the Nation (EDEN) Network. After working as a social worker for more than 15 years, Dr. Morsch changed course and entered medical school at the University of Kansas School of Medicine, and went on to earn a Masters of Public Health degree from Loma Linda University.   She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Southern Nazarene University.  She also trained at In His Image Family Practice Residency Program in Tulsa, Oklahoma.