Dr. Mary B. Watts, clinical assistant professor of medicine and associate medical director at the UW Physicians' Hall Health Primary Care Center on campus, has been named president of the Seattle Academy of Internal Medicine, one of the area's oldest organizations for medical professionals. A general internist, Watts spent a year on the clinical faculty at the University of Michigan before joining the staff at Hall Health. Her main interests are health policy in preventive care, health promotion and women's health care.

Dr. Abe Bergman, professor of pediatrics and director of pediatrics at Harborview Medical Center, is the first recipient of the Ambulatory Pediatric Association's Public Policy Award. The award recognizes an individual or program whose public policy advocacy efforts at the state, regional national or international level have improved the health and well-being of infants, children or adolescents. Bergman is being honored for his long-term advocacy for flame-retardant sleepwear for children, sudden infant death awareness and bicycling safety. He will receive the award in May at the APA annual meeting in New Orleans.

The Seattle Bicycle Helmet Campaign, developed and implemented by Drs. Fred Rivara and Abe Bergman of the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center and the Department of Pediatrics, is one of 17 projects featured in a monograph recently released by the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association: Medicine and Public Health: The Power of Collaboration. The campaign began in 1988 and lasted eight years, promoting the use of helmets through health care providers, schools, community organizations and the media, and providing coupons for reduced prices on helmets. Visits to Seattle-area emergency rooms by children for bike-related head injuries fell by two-thirds. The 17 projects in the publication were selected from more than 400 reviewed.

Dr. Joseph Czerniecki, associate professor of rehabilitation medicine and director of the Motion Analysis Laboratory and Regional Amputee Clinic at the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System, has been named to a three-year term on the new Orthotics and Prosthetics Advisory Committee established by the Washington State Department of Health. The committee will advise on professional practice and administrative rules governing licensing of prosthetists and orthotists.

John Fergason, head of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine's Division of Prosthetics and Orthotics, has been elected to a three-year term on the National Commission on Orthotic and Prosthetic Education, which sets educational standards in the field. He will serve on committees that oversee program accreditation, certification examination and practitioner education standards.