The 2019 ACR Award Winners & Distinguished Fellows

Paulding Phelps Award

Alfred E. Denio, MD, rheumatology fellowship program director at Geisinger Health System, Danville, Pa., received the Paulding Phelps Award for his outstanding service to patients, community and the practice of medicine.

Dr. Denio is passionate about physician education. He has personally recruited more than 100 community faculty physicians for the Eastern Virginia Medical School, Norfolk, and helped first- and second-year medical students receive their first clinical experience in medicine.

“This award is the highlight of my rheumatology career,” says Dr. Denio. “It’s a prestigious honor to be recognized by colleagues and peers; it’s an overwhelming experience in my professional life.”

In 1981, Dr. Denio earned his medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh. He completed his internal medicine residency in 1984 at Geisinger Health System and, after spending the next year as chief medical resident, finished his rheumatology fellowship there in 1987. That same year, he joined the Center for Arthritis and Rheumatic Diseases, Norfolk, and also served as volunteer director of rheumatology at Eastern Virginia Medical School. In this new role, he helped develop the M1-M2 longitudinal mentorship program and organized rheumatology teaching from 2000–10.

He also founded a free rheumatology clinic at the Chesapeake Health Department, Va., where he volunteered to treat rheumatic disease patients without health insurance.

He returned to Geisinger Health System in 2010 as an adjunct assistant clinical professor of internal medicine at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, Philadelphia. Two years later, he assumed the rheumatology fellowship program director position at Geisinger Health System, where he remains today.

Since joining the ACR in 1987, he has served on the board and acted as a liaison to several committees. He has chaired the Affiliate Society Council, leading the effort to form the Insurance Subcommittee of the ACR’s Committee on Rheumatologic Care and the EMR Subcommittee.

His efforts over the years have not gone unnoticed. The Eastern Virginia Medical School presented him with the Distinguished Service Award in the Department of Internal Medicine in 1999 and the Dean’s Community Faculty Achievement Award in 2002. He received the Outstanding Community Service Award from the city of Chesapeake in 2005 and the Arthritis Foundation’s Medical Excellence Award in 2010.

“There are a number of individuals who deserve credit for fostering my career,” says Dr. Denio, pointing to ACR Past President Joseph Flood, MD, for example. “My focus in subsequent years is to make the rheumatology fellowship at Geisinger a premier fellowship known, among other things, for improving the quality of care that rheumatologists everywhere provide.”