BioMed SA Chair Henry Cisneros, left, presents the 2007 Julio Palmaz Award to Dr. Karen Davis, President of The Commonwealth Fund, at the BioMed SA Annual Meeting in San Antonio. With them is Dr. Fernando Guerra, Director of the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, who nominated Dr. Davis for the honor.

BioMed SA celebrates innovation in healthcare and the biosciences with the Palmaz Award and this year, Karen Davis Ph.D., president of The Commonwealth Fund in New York City, is being recognized for her influence and leadership on healthcare issues we all face and the movement toward significant health care system reform. She is the first healthcare leader to be recognized with the award, now in its second year. BioMed SA will present the tribute during its Annual Dinner Meeting at the University of the Incarnate Word at 7 PM on December 13, 2007 (in the Rosenberg Sky Room)

Dr. Davis is credited for creating the forerunner of the SCHIP during President Carter's Administration (called the "Child Health Assessment Program") and designing and funding the RAND Health Insurance Experiment that analyzed access to healthcare and outcomes that drive health benefit plans today. She is a nationally recognized economist, with a distinguished career in public policy and research. Before joining the Fund, she served as chairman of the Department of Health Policy and Management at The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where she also held an appointment as professor of economics. She served as deputy assistant secretary for health policy in the Department of Health and Human Services from 1977-1980, and was the first woman to head a U.S. Public Health Service agency.

The issues related to uninsured Americans remain timely and of profound impact on the local community as Texas has the highest rate of uninsured residents in the country, 24.6%. In Bexar County that number is 26.4%, double the national average. That translates to an estimated 350,000 people in our community who are one serious illness or injury away from financial disaster.

BioMed SA Mission Statement:
The mission of BioMed SA is to organize and promote San Antonio's healthcare and biosciences assets to accelerate growth of the sector and enhance San Antonio's reputation as a city of science and medicine.

The organization began its work in 2005 in response to the growth of the Healthcare and Bioscience Industry as a dominant force in the San Antonio economy. Its economic impact in 2006 was $15.3 billion; the industry paid more than $4.4 billion in wages and salaries to 112,762 employees in 2006. One of every seven San Antonio employees works in the Healthcare and Bioscience Industry. The Healthcare and Bioscience industry has added approximately 22,000 net new jobs over the past decade, significantly fueling San Antonio's growth.

Commonwealth Fund Mission Statement:
The mission of The Commonwealth Fund is to promote a high performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, particularly for society's most vulnerable, including low-income people, the uninsured, minority Americans, young children, and elderly adults.

About the Palmaz Award:
The Palmaz award honors individuals or organizations that have made significant contributions to advances in these fields. Julio Palmaz, M.D., world-renowned inventor of the PALMAZ® Stent, became the inaugural recipient and namesake of an industry award honoring innovation in healthcare and the biosciences.

Dr. Palmaz is widely recognized for inventing the first commercially successful intravascular stent, which gained a U.S. patent in 1988 and received FDA approval for use in cardiac arteries in 1994. The Palmaz® Stent revolutionized cardiac care, with more than a million people a year undergoing coronary artery stenting to repair clogged arteries.