Faculty Teaching Awards

After completing medical school and residency at Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Fan remained for advanced training in laparoscopy and urogynecology. She is subspecialty boarded in Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery. As the director of the resident gynecologic surgical practice at Columbia University Medical Center, she kindled her passion for surgical and clinical instruction. In this role, she earned medical student and resident teaching awards.

In late 2012, Dr. Fan joined the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at Yale School of Medicine. She has worked towards improving the access to gynecologic care for the underserved through the Women’s Center at the York Street Campus. In June 2013, the Section of Gynecology was created within the OB/GYN department and Dr. Fan was named Director of this group The Section of Gynecology is committed to improving access to care within the Yale Community, and serving as a consult service to the University. An advocate of evidenced-based medicine, she helped form the Gynecologic Practice Guidelines committee. Moreover, Dr. Fan is committed to creating systems for constant self-assessment and improvement within medicine. She serves as co-chair of the Gynecologic Practice Quality Assurance Committee at Yale. She has also spearheaded a novel process for M&M within the OB/GYN department.

Yale gynecologist Dr. Alla V. Vash-Margita focuses her practice on the medical and emotional needs of children and adolescent girls. It’s a subspecialty, she notes, that represents “a grey zone, where pediatricians may not have enough expertise and ‘adult’ gynecologists may be out of their comfort zone.”

Dr. Vash-Margita received her MD from Uzhgorod State University Medical School in Ukraine and went on to complete her Ob/Gyn residency at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. Dr. Vash-Margita speaks seven languages (English, Ukrainian, Slovak, Polish, Russian, Serbian, and Hungarian). Her fluency in multiple languages allows her to be an active contributor to numerous global humanitarian organizations, including the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee and Yale’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Education Program, which provided psychological counseling to victims of the 2014 Ukraine Revolution.

This award honors an outstanding academic faculty member for outstanding teaching in women’s health. The 2018 recipient was Dr. Christian Pettker.

A native Californian, he came east for college at Princeton University, followed by medical school and residency at Columbia University in New York. He moved to Yale for his Maternal-Fetal Medicine fellowship and has been on faculty there since. For over a decade he has overseen Yale’s comprehensive obstetric patient safety program, which aims to improve patient care by standardizing treatment methods, creating a high reliability culture, and encouraging communication and collaboration between clinicians and departments. In addition to his role as Associate Professor and Chief of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Services, he is a practicing clinician with a focus on labor and birth and high risk pregnancies. A gap year before medical school to teach high school students at Eton College in England convinced Dr. Pettker that teaching would be a part of his lifetime work in medicine. His teaching activities reach undergraduates, medical students, residents, and fellows and Dr. Pettker also teaches courses on obstetrics and quality/safety across the country.

This award honors one outstanding academic faculty member for his or her dedication to teaching students about women’s health. The 2017 recipient was Dr. France Galerneau. Dr Galerneau was born and raised in Canada where she completed her medical education including a residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology and fellowship in Maternal-Fetal Medicine. After practicing perinatology for 12 years at University of British Columbia in Canada, she joined the MFM team at Yale University.

Dr. Galerneau’s scholarly interests include: undergraduate medical education in the field of reproduction, graduate education in maternal-fetal-medicine, particularly OB/GYN ultrasound, obstetrical and pelvic ultrasound, prenatal diagnosis, fetal assessment and maternal complications of pregnancy. She organizes all medical education aspects for her section, Maternal Fetal Medicine consistently offering thoughtful learning opportunities for students, residents, fellows and visiting scholars. She directs the OB/GYN preclinical education for the YSM medical students as well as the physician associate students. For the last four years, she worked with YSM's Strategic Curriculum Rebuild Committee to create a new curriculum, herself directing our new "Across the Lifespan" Module. The first run-through of the new curriculum met with unprecedented approval from students. She is a favorite lecturer among students and residents. She has published and presented internationally with Dr. Janet Hafler on clinical reasoning. Dr. Galerneau is highly deserving of recognition for her dedication to teaching.

This award honors one outstanding academic faculty member for his or her dedication to teaching students about women’s health. The 2016 recipient was Nancy Stanwood, MD, MPH. Nancy L. Stanwood, MD, MPH joined Yale in 2011 as an Associate Professor and Section Chief of Family Planning. Born and raised in Connecticut, she graduated magna cum laude from Brown University and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. She completed her Obstetrics and Gynecology residency at University of Michigan and the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program fellowship at the University of North Carolina, where she also earned her MPH.

Before coming to Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Stanwood was at the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry. During her ten years there, she successfully built and directed the Family Planning service including securing the Kenneth J. Ryan Residency Training Program grant. She is an enthusiastic teacher and among her awards is the prestigious National Faculty Award from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Council on Resident Education in Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Dr. Stanwood’s research interests include the underuse of intrauterine devices and prevention of teen pregnancies. She is a dedicated advocate for her patients and serves on the Board of Physicians for Reproductive Health, a national organization dedicated to sound science in reproductive health policy.