2019 CAP Public Service Award

Originally established in 1989 as the Frank C. Coleman Award for Public Service, this award honors the memory and work of the sixth president of the College of American Pathologists. In 2006, the name of the award was changed to the CAP Public Service Award Established in Honor of Frank C. Coleman. The award is given to a CAP Fellow who best exemplifies the political, citizenship, and leadership qualities of the late Dr. Coleman and is the highest honor for outstanding accomplishments and dedication to political and civic life and to public service in the US. The CAP presents this award when merited, not necessarily on an annual basis.

The College of American Pathologists presents Annette S. Kim, MD, PhD, FCAP, with the 2019 CAP Public Service Award in recognition of her work leading studies to provide evidence in support of common-sense legislation about laboratory-developed tests (LDTs).

In 2014, Dr. Kim began serving on the CAP’s Molecular Oncology Committee. As part of her service on this committee, she recognized that the debate about LDT regulations lacked some important data. She, along with her committee colleagues, saw the enormous opportunity to publish data collected from molecular oncology proficiency testing (PT) surveys to help inform the LDT debate.

In 2017, Dr. Kim relentlessly pursued numerous studies to share molecular oncology PT data. Since that time, she has co-authored five critical publications that have greatly informed the debate about LDTs. The most impactful of these publications was a comparison of LDTs and FDA-approved tests, published in JAMA Oncology in late 2018. She proceeded to lead two other important studies that will soon be co-published in Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine. These studies compare the performance of different analytical methods and vendors and the performance of next-generation sequencing (NGS) assays to non-NGS assays. Dr. Kim also helped generate two other manuscripts providing insight into the clinical practice patterns of laboratories performing NGS and the overall performance of NGS on standardized samples. Dr. Kim's efficiency in generating these manuscripts helped ensure they could be available to support the debate about LDT regulations.

Dr. Kim has also made numerous other contributions to pathology and the CAP, including a course she taught at the 2017 CAP annual meeting, entitled, "The WHO and Beyond: The Myeloproliferative Neoplasms." She serves on the Advisory Panel for the CAP/American Society of Hematology/Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) Guideline on the work-up of lymphomas. She has also helped connect the CAP's efforts and initiatives with those of other professional societies with which she is involved, such as the AMP.

Dr. Kim is currently with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School.

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