Second Bristol-Myers Squibb Lifetime Achievement Award in Hypertension. 1991.

The second Bristol-Myers Squibb Lifetime Achievement Award in Hypertension is presented to Harriet P. Dustan, MD, for her outstanding contributions in the field of hypertension in its broadest scope—clinical, investigative, and public and professional education — and for personal leadership. Dr. Dustan received her undergraduate and medical education from the University of Vermont and her internal medicine training at the Mary Fletcher Hospital in Burlington and the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. After serving on the University of Vermont faculty, she joined the Research Division at The Cleveland Clinic for a fellowship in hypertension with Drs. Irvine H. Page and Arthur C. Corcoran. She remained on the staff for 30 years, developing a world-class center of clinical investigation in hypertensive diseases. Her clinical and investigative achievements have broadened our perspective of the hypertensive diseases in which she championed the concept of essential hypertension as a multifactorial disease of pressure regulation. She has explored many of the pressor mechanisms, relating new knowledge to therapeutic concepts. In her own special way she has been a role model and source of inspiration to all of her colleagues—basic scientists, clinicians, radiologists, pathologists, and all who teach medicine in its broadest sense. Dr. Dustan, when vice chairman of our Council for High Blood Pressure Research, made the difficult choice of becoming president of the American Heart Association — foregoing her long-cherished ambition to chair our council. For her long-standing commitment and contributions she has been awarded the Gold Heart and Distinguished Achievement Awards. She has served her peers as a member of the Advisory Board of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; Regent and Master of the American College of Physicians; Distinguished Physician for the Veterans Administration; Distinguished Professor of the University of Alabama; and as a truly working member of every society to which she was elected. For these achievements and many more, and for over 40 years of contributions to hypertension, Dr. Harriet P. Dustan is recognized by our council for this honor.