Distinguished award for humanitarian efforts

James L. Netterville, MD, Professor of Otolaryngology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, serves as an outstanding example of the finest traditions of altruism that our Foundation seeks to honor. Throughout his long medical career, Dr Netterville has striven to combine surgical skills for physical healing with his heart for emotional and spiritual healing. For the last 5 years, Dr Netterville has used vacation time and personal funds to lead head and neck surgery teams to the Nigerian Christian Hospital in Ikpot Ekpene, southeast Nigeria. Applying his superb technical skills as a head and neck surgeon, he and his teams have operated from dawn to dusk using flap transfers for massive goiters and tumors. By restoring dignity and functionality to horribly disfigured faces, they have transformed the lives of countless children and adults who suffer emotionally and physically from congenital and other deformities. Initially, Dr Netterville and his brother David provided funding for these teams including roundtrip airfares, medical supplies, vaccines and anti-malarial medication, visas, food, lodging, and transportation. This year, he paid for the repairs to hospital electrical system to prevent blackouts during operations. Recently, grateful patients and other donors have contributed to funding the teams. For many years, Dr Netterville, his wife Mitzi, and their 4 children have traveled to serve and aid impoverished families in remote mountain villages in Honduras, Central America. As a youth leader and veteran of church camps, with the heart of a servant who joyfully helps through selfless acts, Dr Netterville has not only given wide-ranging patient care including repairing congenital deformities of hands and feet, but he also assisted

P26 Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery

with dentistry and carpentry when needed. His compassion, gentleness, and true concern for his patients are shown in his return visits to check their progress postoperatively. As a director of Nashville-based Healing Hands International (HHI), Dr Netterville works diligently to arrange shipments of medical supplies and equipment, agricultural aid, and school supplies to needful Third World countries such as Afghanistan, Asuncion, Belize, Brazil, Cuba, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Paraguay, Russia, and the Ukraine. Through the generosity of HHI and various instrument companies, he brought to Nigeria not only medical equipment, but also medications such as anesthesia agents, antibiotics, and pain control drugs, as well as salvaged and resterilized OR materials such as gloves, drapes, bandages, sutures, and scalpels. Dr Netterville earned his medical degree and served his residency at the University of Tennessee Center for Health Sciences. After a preceptorship in skullbase surgery, he studied as a fellow at the University of Iowa in Head and Neck Surgery and Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. He earned the Academy’s Distinguished Service award for service on many committees—Endocrine Surgery, Head and Neck Surgery and Oncology, Neurolaryngology, and Nominating—and on the Journal’s Editorial Board. Dr Netterville’s many friends and associates speak of his personal warmth, his gift of contagious and inspiring compassion, his strong family life, and deep religious convictions. For his long years of service to those with great needs and little hope, Dr James Netterville is honored with the Foundation’s Distinguished Award for Humanitarian Efforts.

GENERAL INFORMATION

DISTINGUISHED AWARD FOR HUMANITARIAN EFFORTS JAMES L. NETTERVILLE, MD