The Duke University School of Medicine has announced the 2026 Michelle P. Winn Inclusive Excellence Awards honoring individuals and teams who have made significant contributions to inclusive excellence over the past year.
The recipients of the 2026 awards are:
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Gerald Bloomfield, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Associate Director for Research at Duke Global Health Institute, Associate Research Professor of Global Health - Faculty Award
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Cindy Canty-Dumas, MSW, Program Coordinator, Duke Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) and the Center for Research, Community Engagement, Social Impact & Trust (CREST) - Staff Award
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The Duke Anesthesia for Social Health (DASH) Team - Team Award
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Daniel Yang - Student Award
The awardees will be recognized at a ceremony during the Advancing Excellence in Research Symposium on April 28.
Bloomfield was recognized for a career devoted to addressing cardiovascular health disparities. The impact of his work is both local — within Duke and Durham — and global, spanning regions in Kenya, Pakistan, and other countries. His many achievements include founding the first Cardiovascular Center of Excellence in Kenya, creating sustainable infrastructure for research, training, and patient care at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital. He also works to address health disparities in the U.S. through his leadership role in the PATHWAYS Study, which examines cardiovascular prevention and specialty referral patterns among people with HIV.
Canty-Dumas was honored for playing a key role in the third cycle of the Advancing Health Equity Together Through Education and Outreach Grant Program. In this role, she built trusted relationships with the grant’s awardees and consistently participated in outreach events to ensure community voices shaped program priorities. She helped increase awareness of health equity resources and supported community-led strategies aimed at reducing health care disparities. Nominators praised her for being a compassionate mentor and colleague and applauded her efforts to strengthen scholarship and research excellence within CTSI’s CREST team by contributing to manuscripts, presentations, and qualitative analysis.
The DASH Team was recognized for its efforts to address social determinants of health and health care disparities in anesthesia graduate medical education and perioperative patient care. In addition to creating patient simulation cases that allow anesthesia trainees to practice addressing social determinants of health, the team is working to create a website of resources to help patients address barriers such as food insecurity, housing insecurity, and low socioeconomic status. The members of the DASH Team are: Peter Yi, MD, MSEd; Reade Tillman, MD; Ashley Vincent Thomson, MD; Sophia Toles, MD; Katrina Hon; Mindy Kim; and Danielle Pitchon.
Yang, a third-year medical student, was honored for his leadership of Medicine in Motion, the School of Medicine’s interprofessional student organization dedicated to supporting wellness and belonging. As president for two years, he helped strengthen community across five health professions programs and oversaw more than 50 events in the 2024–2025 academic year that drew over 1,200 participants. His impact also extends to the broader community through initiatives such as providing nutrition education with Root Causes’ Project FEED and co-organizing a 5K fundraiser with the Duke Physician Assistant Program to support Bull City Fit.
About the Michelle P. Winn Inclusive Excellence Award
The Duke University School of Medicine’s Office for Culture, Engagement, and Impact established the Michelle P. Winn Inclusive Excellence Award in 2016 to recognize individuals who have made significant contributions to inclusive excellence within the School of Medicine community. The award is named for Michelle P. Winn, MD, associate professor of nephrology in the Department of Medicine, who passed away in July 2014. Winn was respected and beloved by her colleagues and deeply committed to supporting the careers of younger physicians and scientists who were impacted by her mentorship and leadership.