Warne to be honored for health outreach

Don Warne

     Donald Warne, a clinical professor at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, is a finalist for a 2007 Health Care Heroes Award, which recognizes excellence in health care, research advancements and community improvements through health promotion and disease prevention efforts.
     Warne was nominated in the Community Outreach category by Leland Fairbanks, a retired physician and vice president of the board of directors of Native Health, which provides health care to Native Americans living in the Phoenix metropolitan area, and Eric M. Ossowski, chief of family medicine at the Phoenix Indian Medical Center.
     Warne’s involvement in health outreach, both in Arizona and around the United States, is extensive, Fairbanks noted in his nomination letter. Warne developed the “Model Tribal Health and Safety Code” for the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc., and has testified before Congress about urban Indian health needs. He often lectures and leads seminars about diabetes and other health-policy issues at conferences around the world and is a resource expert for the Indian Health Service and the Association of Indian Physicians.
     “He has 20 different community projects with which he is working to improve medical outreach to underserved Native Americans, both urban and rural,” said Fairbanks of Warne, a physician who comes from a long line of traditional healers and medicine men in the Oglala Lakota tribe. These projects help both seniors and youth, and are directed at diabetics care, improved nutrition, mental health, drug-abuse prevention, HIV treatment and other needs.
     Rebecca Tsosie, executive director of the Indian Legal Program and a professor at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, said Warne is a skilled practitioner and noted consultant on the administration of healthcare to Native people at the federal, state and tribal levels.
     “He understands the health policy system and knows what innovations need to occur in order for Native people to have the best health care,” Tsosie said. “Dr. Warne has worked tirelessly to achieve needed reforms in Arizona and throughout the United States. The faculty and staff of the Indian Legal Program are proud to support him as a finalist for the Health Care Heroes Award.”
     Warne and the other two finalists in the Community Outreach category, Dr. David Beyda of Phoenix Children’s Hospital and Sheila Gerry of John C. Lincoln Hospitals, will be honored Aug. 23 at a breakfast sponsored by The Business Journal and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona. The event is 7-9:30 a.m. at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa, and tickets, $75 each, are available at http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/event/ or by calling (602)308-6531.