Harper elected to National Academy of Medicine

Diane M. Harper, M.D., M.P.H., M.S., professor of family medicine, was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Medicine, joining 98 other honorees in receiving one of the highest distinctions in health and medicine. She joins 86 current, former, and late U-M faculty members who have earned this distinction, reflecting the university’s longstanding commitment to advancing scientific discovery and improving health.

Harper is an MIT-educated physician-scientist and master clinician whose patient care informs her clinical research. She has been honored by the New Hampshire and Michigan chapters of the American Academy of Family Physicians. She was the lead author of global clinical trials for HPV vaccination and established a benchmark study demonstrating the equivalency of self-sampling for cervical cancer screening in the United States, contributing to a shift away from routine speculum use for screening. She has served in every major departmental leadership role, including clerkship director, residency director, research director and chair of Family Medicine, while continuing her research to improve women's health.

She is an internationally recognized physician-scientist in cervical cancer prevention. She has received two European awards for distinguished scientific accomplishment, the Prix Monaco and EuroGin. She has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization on global cervical cancer prevention and served on review committees for the European Commission and the National Institutes of Health.

Harper has been recognized for her educational leadership by the University of Michigan and the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, receiving a lifetime award for excellence in education and multiple Teacher of the Year awards. Her research has been recognized by the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine with the Curtis Hames Lifetime Achievement Award and nationally by the American Association of Physicians and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to which she was the first family medicine physician elected.

Twenty years after the FDA approved HPV vaccines, cervical cancer incidence among U.S. women ages 18 to 34 has decreased by 50%.