Meet the 2026 Awardee: Lauren Kearney, MD
Lauren Kearney, MD, is a pulmonary and critical care physician at Boston Medical Center and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. She completed internal medicine residency and pulmonary and critical care fellowship at Boston Medical Center and is affiliated with the VA Boston Healthcare System, where she collaborates on research through the VA Center for Health Optimization and Implementation Research (CHOIR).
Dr. Kearney’s research focuses on partnering with communities using participatory methods to co-design and evaluate interventions that improve health outcomes and advance equity in lung cancer care. She has a strong track record of rigorous research productivity with multiple publications in high-impact journals. Her work has secured competitive funding as principal investigator for several projects, including the LUNGevity VA Research Scholar Award for co-designing and piloting a lung cancer screening awareness toolkit for Veterans, and the Charles A. King Fellowship Grant for developing and testing the Community Empowerment and Support for Ending Smoking (CEASE-Smoking) program, a community health worker–led smoking cessation intervention.
Description
The award will be given to a very early career individual with demonstrated potential to make outstanding scientific and scholarly contributions relevant to behavioral and social sciences, clinical epidemiology, statistics, health services research, health economics, comparative clinical efficacy and effectiveness research, patient-centered outcomes research, performance measurement, quality improvement, or implementation science. This award is to recognize individuals with burgeoning talent and dedication to a career applying these methodologies to lung diseases, critical illness, or sleep disorders, and who have already demonstrated significant engagement within the BSHSR Assembly, or ATS as a whole. The award committee encourages nominations from groups who are under-represented in medicine. Awardees will be presented with a framed certificate at the ATS International conference. For guidance regarding whether a nominee is more appropriate for the Emerging or Early Award category, please reach out to the BSHSR Planning Committee Chair ahead of the submission deadline.
Criteria
- Current trainee, Instructor, Assistant Professor, or an equivalent rank in a non-academic institution
- Currently in post-doctoral or clinical training, or up to 3 years after completion of terminal training degree, excluding time off for personal circumstances
- Current ATS member
- Have not previously received an Emerging Career award or Early Career Achievement award from any ATS assembly
- Cannot concurrently be nominated for an Early Career Achievement award
- The submission package must include the candidate’s updated curriculum vitae and a nomination letter from an assembly member addressing the candidate’s qualifications within the scored award domains.
Scoring
Applicants are scored on 6 criteria using a 1-5 rating system across the following categories: summed scores provide an overall score:
- Scientific and scholarly contributions/products
- Teaching/mentoring/educational contributions
- Clinical and/or academic excellence and leadership contributions
- Participation in BSHSR Assembly and/or other ATS activities (apprenticeships, committees, workshops, etc.)
- Demonstrated interest and promise in a career focused on contributions relevant to the BSHSR Assembly
- Overall impact/impression of the dossier submitted for award application