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TEMPLIN RECEIVES PAULDING PHELPS AWARD FROM AMERICAN COLLEGE OF RHEUMATOLOGY

ATLANTA – David W. Templin, MD, rheumatologist at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage, Alaska, received the Paulding Phelps Award from the American College of Rheumatology during the ACR Annual Scientific Meeting, October 16 – 21 in Philadelphia, Pa.

The award is named after ACR past President Paulding Phelps, the first community-based private practitioner to serve as president of the ACR. It is given to a clinical rheumatologist for outstanding service to patients, community and the profession of medicine.

Dr. David W. Templin was born in Billings, Mont. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, in 1955. He received a Medical Degree in 1959 from the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle Wash. At the United States Public Health Hospital he finished a rotating internship in 1960 and returned for residency to the same institution in 1963 after three years as a physician on the Indian Reservation in Arizona. In 1966 he completed an internal medicine residency and returned to provide care for the Indians in Arizona. In 1970 he moved, still with the Indian Health Service, to Alaska. In 1975 he traveled, temporarily to Tucson Arizona to receive rheumatology training. Back in Alaska Dr. Templin began a rheumatology practice limited to the Alaska Native and American Indians. In 1989 he retired from the U.S. Public Health Service and now employed by Indian Tribal Groups, continued to provide arthritis care to Native people of Alaska.

Immediately after official retirement Dr. Templin served as co-principle investigator on “The Circumpolar Spondyloarthropathy Project,” an investigation funded by National Institutes of Health and operating in conjunction with investigators in Russia. During this time—and presently—he has provided rheumatology services for Alaska Natives and American Indians both at his home institution and at outlying health facilities around the state of Alaska. Dr. Templin travels to their far-flung clinics at 15 sites, logging more than 50,000 air miles and over 30 trips each year. The sites of these clinics that extend from Barrow to Ketchikan lie 200 to 700 miles from his home and office in Anchorage. There are 130,000 Natives in Alaska and 100,000 of them live more than 200 miles from Anchorage. One of only five rheumatologist in Alaska, he provides care to patients and training to primary care providers at remote sites where no specialized rheumatology care is provided. Without the extensive travel and distant clinics most of the 100,000 Alaska Natives and American Indians would not have any access to care.

Dr. Templin is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and a fellow of the American College of Rheumatology. His entire career has been spent working with the American Indians and Alaska Natives. He and his wife, Mickey, have five children and 12 grandchildren.

The ACR is an organization of and for physicians, health professionals, and scientists that advances rheumatology through programs of education, research, advocacy and practice support that foster excellence in the care of people with or at risk for arthritis and rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases.

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