Inaugural - The Joe Monroe Lifetime Achievement Award

Nov 7, 2021

Joe Monroe, MPAS, PA, Inaugural Annual SDPA Award Winner

When developing a lifetime achievement award for SDPA’s new annual awards program, the Membership Committee saw a clear choice not only for the inaugural awardee, but also for the namesake of the award itself: SDPA founder and first president Joe Monroe.

Joe graduated from the University of Oklahoma PA program in 1978 and by 1985 he was practicing dermatology exclusively, as he does to this day.

In 1992, Joe became interested in connecting with other Derm PAs nationwide and learning how many there were. He formed what was then called Physician Assistants in Dermatology (PAD) and worked with a few other founders to place recruitment ads in medical journals, eventually finding about a dozen members. In February 1995, in New Orleans, the group held its first meeting, where the name was officially changed to the SDPA and Joe was elected president of the board of directors.

After leading the growing Society through its early years, Joe continued to stay involved, eventually becoming President a second time in 2005. Since then, Joe has continued to focus on PA education, through his numerous published articles on dermatology topics to serving as a speaker at conferences, including earlier this year at SDPA’s Summer Conference in Chicago.

Today, SDPA is forty-three-hundred members strong, and we cannot thank Joe enough for all that he us done to bring us to together to where we are today as a profession.