Thuy D. Bui received the 2022 Pearl Birnbaum Hurwitz Award

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Professor Thuy D. Bui was awarded the Arnold P. Gold Foundation’s 2022 Pearl Birnbaum Hurwitz Humanism in Healthcare Award for decades of work that has improved the lives of underserved populations, refugees and immigrants across two continents.

The award honors a woman who exemplifies humanism and through scholarship, advocacy, leadership or work has advanced the well-being of underserved or vulnerable populations in health care.

Bui has been director of the Global Health and Underserved Populations Residency Track at the School of Medicine and UPMC for more than 15 years. She is also an affiliated faculty member of the School of Public Health’s Center for Health Equity and Pitt’s Center for African Studies.

She joined the Pitt faculty in 1999. She served as medical director of Pitt’s Program for Health Care to Underserved Populations from 1999 to 2015, and, until 2017, headed the Birmingham Free Clinic, which serves the uninsured, underinsured, immigrants and other marginalized groups. She still sees patients there weekly.

Bui has won several awards for her teaching, mentoring and commitment to social justice, including the Arnold P. Gold Foundation’s Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award. She is a member of the American College of Physicians, Society of General Internal Medicine, Association of Clinicians for the Underserved and the School of Medicine’s Academy of Master Educators.

Ann Thompson, vice dean of the School of Medicine, relayed one student’s description of Bui in her nomination for the award: “She has embodied for me the concept of fostering belonging. She has an open-door policy and is truly brilliant in being able to see structural problems and find innovative, effective ways to address them … she guides young faculty and residents to be able to grow in our humanitarian mission. She is truly a shining star.”