Pescosolido honored
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Bernice Pescosolido, Chancellor's Professor of Sociology at Indiana University Bloomington, received the 2005 Leo G. Reeder Award for Distinguished Contributions to Medical Sociology from the Section on Medical Sociology of the American Sociological Association. The award was presented at the recent ASA annual meeting.
Pescosolido, a medial sociologist, also was appointed last spring to the Federal Advisory Committee of the National Children's Study. The committee's role is to make recommendations on the planning, development and implementation of the NCS. The NCS will follow a geographically representative sample of American children from before birth through age 21, with the goal of improving the health and well-being of children. The study will focus on how a broad range of biological, genetic, environmental and social factors affect child development, health and illness. Authorized by the Children's Health Act of 2000, the NCS will start following children and their caretakers in 2006.
The Leo G. Reeder Award recognizes scholarly contributions, especially a body of work displaying an extended trajectory of productivity and encompassing theory and research. The award, established in 1978, also acknowledges teaching, mentoring and training as well as service to the medical sociology community broadly defined.
Pescosolido is the founder and director of the Indiana Consortium for Mental Health Services Research and the IU Strategic Directions Initiative's CONCEPT I Program in Health and Medicine. Both are designed to enhance the research and training of Indiana University's faculty and students to contribute to the national agenda on health and health care. Pescosolido has focused her research and teaching on social issues in health, illness and healing. Her research agenda addresses how social networks connect individuals to their communities and to institutional structures, providing the "wires" through which society's energies (social interaction) influence people's attitudes and actions.
Pescosolido has received numerous grants from federal and private sources including the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. From 1989 to 1995, she held a Research Scientist Development Award and from 1997 through 2003 held an Independent Scientist Award, both from the NIMH. In 2003, she received the Wilbert Hites Mentoring Award from Indiana University in recognition of her teaching and mentoring activities. Pescosolido has published widely in sociology, social science, public health and medical journals; served on editorial boards of a dozen national and international journals; and been elected to a variety of leadership positions in professional associations including currently serving as vice president of the American Sociological Association (2003-04; vp-elect 2002-03) and as chair-elect (2004-05) of the ASA Section on Sociology of Mental Health. She received a B.A. degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1974 and a Ph.D. degree from Yale University in 1982.
