The Academy is privileged to honor Graham E. Quinn, MD, with the 2019 Outstanding Humanitarian Service Award.
This award recognizes Dr. Quinn for his efforts to improve the outcome for infants with retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), which is the leading cause of preventable blindness in premature infants worldwide.
Dr. Quinn was nominated by the American Association of Pediatric Ophthalmology & Strabismus (AAPOS) for helping to bring educational programs and collaborating with ophthalmologists and pediatricians in Asia, Africa and South America to develop standards of care and training.
Dr. Quinn is recognized as a world expert in ROP. Every year, 20,000 to 30,000 premature infants go blind or are severely handicapped from ROP, and with the swift advances in obstetrics and neonatology, the survival of extremely low birth weight infants at risk for ROP is growing exponentially. Dr. Quinn has been a leader in nearly every major ROP project that has come to guide clinical practices, including “The International Classification of Retinopathy of Prematurity,” the multicenter clinical trials that established the guidelines for treatment and screening (CRYO ROP and ETROP), and recent large National Institutes of Health studies on telemedicine (e-ROP) and ROP risk prediction (G-ROP).
Dr. Graham used his expertise to create highly impactful service initiatives throughout the world to combat ROP where it is creating the most suffering. The most recent epidemic of ROP has risen in parts of the world that lack the organization, infrastructure, resources, and political support to establish the systems necessary to screen for, diagnose, and treat ROP. As a result, tens of thousands of infants go blind from severe ROP each year.
Over the past two decades, Dr. Quinn has volunteered his time, crisscrossing the world from India to Peru and Brazil, Vietnam to Siberia and now Africa. He has worked closely with local ophthalmologists, neonatologists, nurses, politicians and government officials building a shared vision and empowering all the stakeholders in the fight against the growing ROP epidemic.
Dr. Quinn’s vision and leadership has been transformative in the care of premature infants in countries around the world. His research contributions and service to local communities have not only created the standards by which ROP is managed clinically, but his efforts have resulted in mandatory ROP screening programs where none existed before.
Dr. Quinn practices pediatric ophthalmology in Philadelphia, Pa. He went to medical school at Duke University and completed his residency at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a pediatric fellowship at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia