2001 Clinical Award for the Specialist

Powel Kazanjian, M.D., associate professor, Infectious Diseases, Internal Medicine

Dr. Powel Kazanjian, Director of the HIV/AIDS Treatment Program is the recipient of this year's Clinical Award for the Specialist. Dr. Kazanjian has built an outstanding, nationally-recognized clinical HIV/AIDS Program.

In 1997, the program saw a dramatic increase in size and scope when Dr. Kazanjian competed successfully for a federal Ryan White Title III grant. This award provided support in the amount of $321,950 per year. In 1994, the UM HIV/AIDS patient population was 100-150. By the year 2000, the program had grown to 550 individuals. Dr. Kazanjian was able to receive funding again in 2000 for the Ryan White grant. The annual amount of the award is currently $528,198 per year.

There are currently 3 phase III clinical trials, 4 single-site trials, and a compassionate use of trial in progress. Local AIDS support programs now recognize the UM HIV/AIDS program as the best in the region. The US News & World Report had ranked UM HIV/AIDS Treatment Program as 28th best in the country in 1997, the only nationally-ranked program in the State of Michigan.

Dr. Kazanjian began his career at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1975. In 1979, he obtained his M.D., from Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts. He then went onto Chicago where he completed his internship in 1980 and was a Junior and Senior Resident Physician from 1980-1982 in Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago in Chicago, IL. Back to Boston he went to do a Clinical Fellowship in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and in Infectious Disease at Brigham and Women's Hospital both commencing in 1983.

In 1984, he completed a Research Fellowship in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a Research Fellowship in Infectious Disease at Brigham and Women's Hospital. At Brown University School of Medicine in Providence, Rhode Island, Dr. Kazanjian was appointed as Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine in 1985 and remained there until 1989. He was then appointed in 1989 to Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and in 1993 to the rank of Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine. He

then joined our faculty at the University of Michigan Medical School in Internal Medicine in 1994 as Assistant Professor and promoted to Associate Professor in 1997.