Seda rewards veterinarians' contributions
Three veterinarians received the President's Award during the AVMA Annual Convention in Salt Lake City, including the Association's own Dr. Lyle P. Vogel, director of the Scientific Activities Division. Other recipients were Dr. Stanley E. Held, Buffalo, Minn, and Dr. Robert A. Taylor, Denver.
The awards were given by then AVMA president, Dr. Leonard F. Seda, at the General Session, July 22.
Established in 1990, the award is given to individuals and groups inside and outside veterinary medicine who have had a positive influence on animal or public health, veterinary organizations, and the profession.
Since his graduation from Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine in 1957, Dr. Held has been active at all levels of organized veterinary medicine and continues to strengthen the profession through volunteerism.
In 1999, he volunteered to serve as a consultant in Mongolia, advising and mentoring local veterinarians. His monthlong efforts focused on establishing and operating profitable private veterinary practices and discussing the transfer of technology to Mongolian veterinarians. Other veterinarians are continuing the work begun by Dr. Held.
Dr. Held represented District VI on the AVMA Executive Board from 1984-1990, serving as chairman his final year on the board. He also chaired the AVMA Executive Board Credentialing Committee, the AVMA Legislative Planning Committee, and the 1995-1996 Alternative and Complementary Veterinary Medicine Committee.
Dr. Held participates in the AAEP, AASP, and the Society for Theriogenology as well as other national, state, and regional associations.
Dr. Taylor, owner of a 24-hour emergency animal hospital in Denver, is regularly featured on "Emergency Vets," a program on cable TV's Animal Planet channel. His participation with the program brings the human-animal bond into more than 53 million homes each day.
Dr. Taylor also owns the Colorado Canine Sports Medicine/Rehabilitation Clinic, a canine physical therapy clinic. He is adjunct associate professor at the University of Denver and serves as a clinical associate at the Veterinary Teaching Hospital at Colorado State University.
A 1970 graduate of Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine, he served as president of the Denver Area Veterinary Medical Society and the Colorado VMA. Dr. Taylor is a member of executive boards of the American College of Veterinary Surgeons and the Denver Zoological Foundation.
In conjunction with Dr. Vogel's duties as division director, he is staff consultant to the AVMA-USDA Relations Committee, the AVMA Council on Public Health and Regulatory Veterinary Medicine, and the Practitioners Food Safety Advisory Committee. He also is coordinator of emergency preparedness for the AVMA.
He assisted the efforts of the Steering Committee on Judicious Therapeutic Antimicrobial Use and the FDA-CVM. Together, the groups collaborated to develop a framework for risk-based evaluations for the effects of antimicrobial use in food animals on human health. Approvals of antimicrobials for use in food animals will be based on the results of this evaluation.
Dr. Vogel has also been instrumental in the AVMA's profession-wide initiative to develop and implement judicious-use principles for the therapeutic use of antimicrobials by veterinarians.
A member of the US Army Order of Military Medical Merit, Dr. Vogel was appointed to the US Secretary of Agriculture's Advisory Committee on Foreign Animal and Poultry Diseases. He is a 1967 graduate of the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine and a diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Preventive Medicine.