The 17-member board serves as the governing body for the association, which represents all 133 accredited U.S. and 17 accredited Canadian medical schools; nearly 400 major teaching hospitals and health systems, including 62 Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers; and nearly 90 academic and scientific societies. Through these institutions and organizations, the AAMC represents 128,000 faculty members, 75,000 medical students and 110,000 resident physicians.
Members are among the nation's leaders in academic medicine. They include the chair, chair-elect, immediate past chair, and chairs and chairs-elect of the association's three member councils — the Council of Deans, the Council of Teaching Hospitals and Health Systems, and the Council of Academic Societies. In addition, the panel has seven at-large members, including a medical student and resident physician, and one "public member" not affiliated with the AAMC or a medical school or teaching hospital.
Pomeroy is a visionary physician-scientist and national thought-leader who is deeply committed to fostering innovation to improve health care and health nationwide. She is chair-elect for the AAMC Council of Deans and is a member of the AAMC research advisory group. She also serves on the board of directors for the Association of Academic Health Centers and the Foundation for Biomedical Research. She helps shape policy through her work on the Institute of Medicine's Electronic Health Records Innovation Collaborative and as a member of the Advisory Committee on Research on Women's Health, which provides leadership to the Office of Research on Women's Health at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Her experience as a member of the Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine provides expertise in the emerging field of regenerative medicine.
As an infectious disease physician, Pomeroy has focused her career on HIV patient care, design of improved health-care delivery systems to reduce disparities and improve health outcomes, and studies of host-immune responses. She is actively involved in improving the translation of basic discoveries to therapeutics. She currently is the principal investigator on the National Science Foundation "Partners for Innovation" grant to develop a Medical Technology Commercialization Clinic to translate new technologies created in university laboratories into marketable products. She is committed to the development of a diverse, interprofessional workforce and is principal investigator for the National Institutes of Health's Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women's Health grant, which prepares young investigators to conduct leading-edge research in women's health.
As vice chancellor for Human Health Sciences and medical school dean, Pomeroy has led a quadrupling of research funding over the past eight years at UC Davis Health System, including the award of one of the nation's first Clinical and Translational Science Center programs. Under her leadership, many other renowned programs at UC Davis have flourished, including telemedicine, the MIND Institute's study of new drugs for autism, the National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center, and a California Institute of Regenerative Medicine-funded stem cell facility with a state-of-the-art Good Manufacturing Practice laboratory. Her leadership was pivotal in securing a $100 million philanthropic grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to establish the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis, dedicated to leveraging interprofessional education and innovative technologies to transform health care.
With more than 100 scientific publications and sustained professional service, Pomeroy is the recipient of numerous professional awards. This past year, MedStart, a Sacramento region economic collaborative, created the annual Claire Pomeroy awards program to celebrate achievements and innovations in medical technology. The first recipients were named in spring 2010.