Penn student Anthony Mazzarelli has been named one of this year's Ten Outstanding Young Americans, a title he can share with the likes of Elvis Presley and former presidents John Kennedy and Bill Clinton.
Awarded to Americans between the ages of 21 and 39, the United States Junior Chamber of Commerce's Ten Outstanding Young Americans award recognizes achievement in areas such as academic leadership, influencing public opinion and volunteer work.
A Law and Bioethics graduate student with a medical degree from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Mazzarelli has founded a health care clinic in Camden, N.J., and had a stint writing for the hit TV show ER.
"It's been a real treat to watch [Mazzarelli] grow and mature as a future leader of academic medicine across the country," said Robert Mehne, a dean at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. "He's totally focused on others, whether it's contributing to the learning of his student or resident colleagues, or the learning of his patients or the learning of his community. He's kind of the standard against which we judge the ideal medical student right now."
Jacksonville Jaguars Quarterback Mark Brunell and Olympic wrestler Rulon Gardner, who have both founded charity organizations, were among this year's 10 recipients.
Award winners are selected by a committee of independent judges, but can be nominated for the award by anyone. Mazzarelli, for example, was nominated by a close friend.
Joanne Kulinski said she nominated him because of his academic achievements and community involvement.
"One of the big things is that he's an excellent teacher. His accomplishments are not necessarily for his own benefit, but he wants to teach the people around him," she said.
She pointed to one of Mazzarelli's major accomplishments -- the founding of the Healthcare Outreach Project in Camden, N.J., two years ago.
This student-run clinic enables Camden residents who do not have medical insurance to receive good primary medical care and some specialty care.
"The patients aren't being treated as patients without insurance, but it's actually quality service for patients in the inner city in Camden," Kulinski said. "It doesn't give the perception that it's a free walk-in charity clinic."
According to Mazzarelli, universities across the country, including Penn, have expressed interest in modeling clinics after HOP.
Based on his practical experience, Mazzarelli said that he wanted to look into some of the bigger issues in health care policy.
"While I was in medical school, I started having a growing interest in, not only the treatment of the illnesses of the patients I had in front of me, but also the reasons why they were in front of me, especially if they were uninsured," Mazzarelli said. "So I started thinking more about policy."
As he started to research health policy, he realized that he would need to be familiar with law in order to affect change in medicine.
"Unfortunately, lawyers make a lot of the major decisions in health policy," he said.
Instead of seeing that as a barrier, Mazzarelli decided to go to law school and to get a masters degree in Bioethics so that he would be better equipped to navigate through the world of politics.
Accordingly, Mazzarelli has worked to facilitate public discussion about matters that are important to him through unusual channels -- for instance, throughout ER and other media outlets.
"TV is a medium for social change, and that's how people talk about bioethical and medical policy issues," he said. "People know more about medicine from watching ER than from talking to their doctor."
Mehne said that Mazzarelli used his time at ER to share his medical expertise with television executives and the general public.
"He provided examples of ethical dilemmas that healthcare produces on a daily basis, and I think some of the storylines that year were written around those," Mehne said. "He served as an expert consultant and gave them the medical student's perspective on life in the emergency department."
Mehne said that Mazzarelli's accomplishments and ability to motivate others indicate that the future of medicine is in good hands.
"He's sort of the exemplary model of what we hope academic medical faculty are in the future," Mehne said. "He is absolutely pure energy. No matter what project he gets involved in, he's moving it at least to the next level and often a few levels ahead."
Despite such praise and receiving the prestigious TOYA award, Mazzarelli says he is focusing mostly on what he can accomplish in the future.
"I'm looking ahead and hoping I can make a difference with how healthcare is run in the country," he said. "I don't think of [the TOYA] as recognizing past achievement as much as a call or responsibility to make a commitment to public service in the future and to live up to the ideals of the award, particularly when I found out the names of some of the past recipients."
After he receives his law and bioethics degrees this May, Mazzarelli plans to practice emergency medicine and eventually become a health policymaker.
