The fifth annual American Legacy Foundation^® Honors event took place on March 10, 2008 at The Pierre Hotel in New York City. The gala benefited the Foundation's many valuable programs and campaigns that educate the public about the deadly toll of tobacco, help youth never to start smoking, and provide resources and tools for adults who need help quitting smoking.

• Bill Novelli, CEO of AARP and former President and current Chairman of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. Novelli received the Public Service Award.
  
  
• Dr. Claudia Henschke received the Humanitarian in Medicine and Public Health Award. Dr. Henschke, Ph.D., M.D., F.C.C.P., is Chief of Chest Imaging, Professor of Radiology, Department of Radiology, New York Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.
  
  
• Thomas H. Peterson M.D., from Grand Rapids, Michigan, received the Community Activist Award. Dr. Peterson is Medical Director, Quality Improvement at Helen DeVos Children's Hospital and Medical Director, Healthier Communities, Spectrum Health.

Profiles of the Honorees-

Dr. Henschke is the Chief of Chest Imaging at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Professor of Radiology and of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. She is the principal investigator of the Early Lung Cancer Action Project (ELCAP), a program which is evaluating the efficacy of low-dose screening for lung cancer. As a result of ELCAP, two further screening projects have been started, the NY-ELCAP and the I-ELCAP, which Dr. Henschke also leads. NY-ELCAP is a 12 institution project in New York State and I-ELCAP includes more than 50 institutions in nine countries throughout the world, all focused on screening for lung cancer.

Dr. Henschke started as a programmer at the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest, and later became the principal programmer at Wadley Medical Research Center in Dallas, Texas, where she developed the systems design and programming of medical computer systems. She then developed the systems design and programming for the first medical computing facility in Finland for IBM Finland.

At Georgetown University Medical School, she participated in the development of the first Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) developed at Georgetown Medical Center in Washington, D.C. She served as the statistician responsible for design, development and implementation of national randomized clinical trials being done at the National Academy of Science, as the statistical consultant to several large Veterans' Administration clinical trials on methadone, and as a researcher in the Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health.

She has also served as the co-principal investigator and statistician for a National Cancer Institute 10-year randomized chemoprevention (beta-carotene) trial of skin cancer in albinos and was the principal statistician for a 10-year National Institutes of Health grant for a series of randomized chemoprevention trials for neonatal jaundice.

Dr. Henschke studied at the University of Geneva and the University of Munich before receiving her bachelor's degree from Southern Methodist University in French and Mathematics. She went on to obtain a master's degree from Southern Methodist in Mathematical Statistics, and a Ph.D. in Mathematical Statistics and Computer Sciences from the University of Georgia. She was an Assistant Professor of Statistics and Computer Science at the University of Georgia, and an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at Georgetown University before receiving her M.D. from Howard University Medical School. She was a resident and clinical fellow in radiology at Harvard Medical School in the Brigham and Women's Hospital and an Assistant Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School before moving to Cornell in 1983. Dr. Henschke has written more than 250 scientific articles, two books and more than 50 chapters.

Bill Novelli is CEO of AARP, a membership organization of more than 39 million people age 50 and older. AARP's mission is to enhance the quality of life for all as they age. Prior to joining AARP, Mr. Novelli was President of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, whose mandate is to change public policies and the social environment, limit tobacco companies' marketing and sales practices to children, and serve as a counterforce to the tobacco industry and its special interests. He currently serves as the Campaign's Chairman of the Board.

Previously, he was Executive Vice President of CARE, the world's largest private relief and development organization. CARE helps impoverished people in Africa, Asia and Latin America through programs in health, agriculture, environmental protection and small business support. CARE also provides emergency relief to people in need.

Mr. Novelli also co-founded and served as president of Porter Novelli, an international marketing and public relations agency with corporate, non-profit and government clients. He founded Porter Novelli to apply marketing to social and health issues. It is now one of the world's largest public relations agencies and part of the Omnicom Group. He retired from the firm in 1990 to pursue a second career in public service.

Named one of the 100 most influential public relations professionals of the 20th century by the industry's leading publication, Mr. Novelli is a recognized leader in social marketing and social change, and has managed programs in cancer control, diet and nutrition, cardiovascular health, reproductive health, infant survival, pay increases for educators, charitable giving and other programs in the United States and the developing world.

Early in his career, Novelli served as Director of Advertising and Creative Services for the Peace Corps. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a master's degree from Penn's Annenberg School for Communication, and pursued doctoral studies at New York University. He taught marketing management for ten years in the University of Maryland's M.B.A. program and also taught health communications there. In addition, he has written numerous articles and chapters on marketing management, marketing communications, and social marketing in journals, periodicals and textbooks. His book, 50+: Igniting a Revolution to Reinvent America was published in 2006.

Dr. Peterson has nearly 20 years of experience in pediatric medicine. Dr. Peterson currently serves as Medical Director, Quality, Helen DeVos Children's Hospital. In this role, he leads hospital wide initiatives in quality improvement, patient safety and outcomes measurement.

He also serves as Medical Director for Spectrum Health Healthier Communities. He was previously in practice at Michigan Medical, P.C., Michigan's largest physician owned organization, where he served as medical director for five years.

Dr. Peterson was also founder and served as medical director of United Lifestyles, a healthy lifestyle program at the United Memorial Health System, and advises the Spectrum Health Healthy Lifestyles program, as well as a local multi-business wellness program, both involving more than 8,000 employees.

Active in the community, Dr. Peterson works to reduce obesity and smoking. He is chair and founder of Tobacco Free Partners, former chairman of Healthy Kent 2010 and the 2008 President of the Kent County Medical Society. Dr. Peterson has spoken to more than 90,000 school-aged children on tobacco education, healthy living, nutrition and exercise. He has also given more than 200 presentations to health care professionals, health care organizations, businesses and community organizations. He also serves as the team physician for East Kentwood High School, the largest in West Michigan.

Dr. Peterson has worked as an expert in smoke-free worksite policies for more than 20 years, and has been involved in assisting businesses and hospitals locally and nationally in implementing smoke-free campus policies. He also focuses on efforts in the education of health care professionals in adult and pediatric tobacco cessation, nicotine addiction, tobacco use prevention in children, and legislative issues regarding tobacco control. Dr. Peterson is a Clinical Associate Professor at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and is a member of numerous professional organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics (recently completing a three year term on their board of directors), the American Medical Association, the Michigan State Medical Society, the Kent County Medical Society and the American College of Physicians Executives.