Swee to receive AMWA Early Career Physician Award

Melissa Swee, MD, MS, MME, clinical assistant professor in Nephrology, will be presented with the Early Career Physician Award from the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA) at the 111th AMWA Annual Meeting in San Francisco in March. The AMWA is the oldest multispecialty professional organization of women in medicine.

The award recognizes outstanding achievement by an AMWA physician member who is within 16 years of graduating from medical school. Areas of achievement may reflect leadership, academics, clinical care, including but not limited to publishing, teaching, and mentorship; and/or volunteerism.

Susan Hingle, MD, AMWA Immediate Past President and 2026 Awards Chair, said, “Dr. Melissa Swee exemplifies the promise and impact of an early-career physician leader–combining clinical excellence, innovative telehealth solutions, and a deep commitment to equity to improve kidney care for rural Veterans. Her dedication to mentorship, education, and advancing women in academic medicine reflects the values at the heart of AMWA.”

In addition to nephrology and transplant care, Swee directs the telenephrology program at the Iowa City VA Health Care System and serves as Co-Program Director of the VA Quality Scholars Program, where she leads curriculum development in health care improvement. She is the recipient of a federally funded NIH K12 award focused on rural-urban disparities in chronic kidney disease. Using mixed methods, she identifies barriers to timely nephrology access and outcomes to inform data-driven, equitable system redesign. Her work has led to innovative telehealth tools, including a dashboard to enable early identification of kidney disease. She has co-authored more than 40 peer-reviewed publications. As an educator, Dr. Swee’s trainees in the VA Quality Scholars Program have presented at national conferences and published on topics in nephrology, quality improvement, and rural health.

In recognition of her excellence in teaching, she received several teaching awards and the VA Quality Scholars Rising Star Award. She has also served on the VA National Metrics Advisory Board and has contributed to national policy initiatives through the American Society of Transplantation. “Across all areas,” the AMWA awards committee concluded in their announcement, “she is dedicated to improving care delivery and strengthening systems to better serve patients across diverse settings.”