UH medical professor is first Native Hawaiian woman to achieve Master physician recognition

Dr. Marjorie Mau flashes a shaka sign, before the Mastership Ceremony in Washington D.C.

UH Mānoa Native Hawaiian Health Professor Marjorie Mau, MD, has become the first Native Hawaiian woman to be recognized with the title of “Master” physician by the American College of Physicians.

Dr. Mau was welcomed into the ranks of Mastership at a convocation ceremony at ACP'S annual meeting for internal medicine May 5-7, 2016, in Washington, D.C.

In addition to treating patients on Molokaʻi and at the Lau Ola Clinic in Honolulu, operated by University Health Partners of Hawaiʻi, Dr. Mau is a prolific scientist who has conducted groundbreaking research in metabolic disorders among Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. She is one of the top-funded researchers at the UH John A. Burns School of Medicine, having brought more than $20.9 million in external funds to the medical school, helping to fuel Hawaiʻi’s biomedical research economy. (University Health Partners of Hawaiʻi is the practice plan for JABSOM faculty.)

Dr. Mau is also a busy mother of twin toddlers. In fact, she is receiving her Mastership recognition a year late. She was selected into the 2014-2015 class, but as she was pregnant with the twins, she was not able to travel then.

Dr. Mauʻs newest honor places her into a very exclusive community of faculty physicians to receive the rank of Mastership.  Other UH physician faculty who have achieved the rank of Mastership are JABSOM Professor S. Kalani Brady, MD, and the late Irwin Schatz, MD, Max Botticelli, MD, and Ed Cadman, MD.

Dr. Mau is a graduate of Kalani High School and Creighton University, where she earned her undergraduate and medical degrees. She also holds a Master’s degree from the Harvard School of Public Health. She is Principal Investigator and Director of the Center for Native and Pacific Health Disparities Research, and holds the Myron P. Thompson Endowed Chair for Native Hawaiian Health at the UH medical school. She was the first Native Hawaiian female endocrinologist, and founding Chair of the Department of Native Hawaiian Health at JABSOM. In 2010, The National Institutes of Health featured Dr. Mau and seven other U.S. researchers as worthy mentors for young scientists through the “BioMedical Faces of Science" program.

For more information, visit: http://jabsom.hawaii.edu