Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author to be Honored at USciences Founders’ Day
Editor's note: This article was written prior to University of the Sciences' merger with and into Saint Joseph's University and does not reflect the current, combined institution. References to programs, offices, colleges, employees, etc., may be historical information.
At its annual Founders’ Day celebration on February 17, 2022, USciences will honor Sheri Fink MD, PhD, who will also give the keynote address. In recognition of Dr. Fink’s contributions to the public discourse of healthcare and science, she will also receive an honorary doctor of science degree.
Dr. Fink is the author of the New York Times bestselling book Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital about choices made in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She is a co-creator and an executive producer of the Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary television series Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak (2020), filmed the year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Fink contributed to the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the pandemic. She and her colleagues' stories on Ebola in West Africa were recognized with the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, the George Polk Award for health reporting, and the Overseas Press Club Hal Boyle Award. Her story "The Deadly Choices at Memorial," co-published by ProPublica and the New York Times Magazine, received a 2010 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting and a National Magazine Award for reporting.
Dr. Fink is an adjunct associate professor at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. A former relief worker in disaster and conflict zones, she received her MD and PhD from Stanford University. Her first book, War Hospital: A True Story of Surgery and Survival (PublicAffairs), is about medical professionals under siege during the genocide in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Five Days at Memorial was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for nonfiction, the Ridenhour Book Prize, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Book Award, the American Medical Writers Association Medical Book Award, and the NASW Science in Society Journalism Book Award.
Founders' Day at USciences recalls the University's establishment on Feb. 23, 1821, when 68 prominent Philadelphia apothecaries met in Carpenters’ Hall to establish the basis for the improved scientific standards. A year later, they organized and incorporated the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy—the first college of pharmacy in North America.