Ralph Hawley Distinguished Service Award

The University of Wisconsin Medical Alumni Association Ralph Hawley Distinguished Service Award is conferred on an alumnus who has made outstanding contributions to the local community through medical practice, teaching, research, or other humanitarian activities.

2009 Ralph Hawley Distinguished Service Award Recipient

Dorothy M. Barbo, MD '58

Since retiring from the University of New Mexico (UNM) Medical School in 1999, Dr. Barbo has worked and taught in mission and government hospitals overseas. She has been affiliated with several Christian medical and dental associations.

For seven years, she taught intensive conferences for U.S. physicians and dentists overseas so they could earn CME credits to maintain their U.S. licenses. Chair of the Ludhiana Christian Medical College Board USA, Dr. Barbo served the Indian college, part of Punjab University, as chief of gynecologic oncology and of family planning from 1968-1972.

Following graduation from the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, she trained in obstetrics and gynecology at the Lutheran Hospital of Milwaukee. She completed a gynecologic oncology fellowship at the Medical College of Wisconsin and was on the faculty there through 1967.

Dr. Barbo joined the Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1972, serving as director of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology. A decade later, she established the Center for the Mature Woman, one of the first menopause centers in the U.S. In 1991, she joined the UNM and was medical director of the University Center for Women's Health.