Malcolm Bryant Wins 2013 Gordon-Wyon Award.

Malcolm Bryant, a clinical associate professor of international health, was awarded the 2013 Gordon-Wyon Award for Community-based Public Health, Epidemiology and Practice at the 2013 APHA International Health Section Awards Ceremony.

Bryant is currently the lead investigator of a study evaluating how effectively non-governmental organizations and other groups working in Ethiopia can improve the health of the country’s orphans and vulnerable children.

The award celebrates achievement in community-based approaches to public health, a hallmark of the pioneering work of John Gordon and John Wyon. Both were based in Boston and Cambridge for much of their careers and influenced many of today’s advocates of community-based research and care. Bryant was among those directly influenced by Wyon, who was a mentor and friend to Bryant until his death in 2004.

Bryant spoke of that connection at the awards ceremony:

“There have obviously been many factors that have brought me to where I am today and to me receiving this award, but the single most important factor was John Wyon….What John did for me was to be a life-long mentor. From the day we met in Zimbabwe until shortly before John’s death in 2004 we were in regular contact. He didn’t have a curriculum, or set life goals, but through a discussion about who I was, where I was coming from, where I thought I might go, and where I could really go, he steadily and surely helped me through the many small and not-so-small decisions that I had to make to become the professional I am today.”