CHAPTER AFFAIRS By: Peter Graber NCAFP Communications
CHAPTER AWARDS
Dr. Viviana Martinez-Bianchi Named NC Family Physician of the Year for 2021 Last December, during the NCAFP’s Winter Family Physicians Weekend, Duke University’s Dr. Viviana Martinez-Bianchi was named the 2021 North Carolina Family Physician of the Year. The award recognized Dr. Martinez-Bianchi’s wide range of academic teaching, clinical care, health policy leadership, as well as a lifelong commitment to serving and improving care to marginalized communities. Growing up in Argentina, Dr. Martinez-Bianchi, MD, would watch her father, Carlos, deliver care to those around him – his family, members of the community and many more in the hospital and surgical center where he worked. A vascular surgeon by training, she was inspired by his passion for people and his commitment to providing care for the underserved and marginalized. “I grew up in an environment with doctors,” noted Dr. Martinez-Bianchi. “My father, although a surgeon, I think he was the most family-doctor surgeon I’ve ever met! He would take his doctor bag with him in our cruising sailboat and fishermen who lived on the river’s edge would row out to our boat to consult with him. He would provide advice, cure wounds, bring medications from the city, check blood pressures, recommend stopping smoking. Sometimes we would bring someone back to the city for care at the hospital.” Martinez-Bianchi described a time when she was fourteen, specifically the 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration by the World Health Organization – a watershed moment that essentially declared health as a human right for the first time -- had a big influence on her parents, especially her father. “My father introduced me to the concept of the intersec-
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tion between clinical care and public health and suggested I should create my own path.” This led her to dream of her own goals. “I was taught to pay attention to the needs of the community,” she explained. “When I read about the declaration of Alma-Ata, I discovered I wanted a career that involved working in international policy. My international activities started with a summer program spent in Ireland learning English as a Second Language and living with a family in Dublin, and then going on to be a foreign exchange student in Mount Prospect, a suburb of Chicago, for my senior year of high school. In medical school, I learned I enjoyed primary care and wanted to help people of all ages.” At the time, Family Medicine was rising in the United States, and while not popular yet in South America, she knew she wanted to combine some aspects of public health and clinical care.
The North Carolina Family Physician
