The UCLA Department of Medicine (DoM) is pleased to congratulate Susan Ettner, PhD and Dennis Slamon, MD, PhD, on their election to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), one of three academies that make up the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in the United States. Operating under the 1863 Congressional Charter of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academies are chartered to provide objective advice on matters of science, technology and health. Election to the NAM is one of the highest honors in health and medicine, recognizing individuals whose contributions have helped advance their fields and improve human health.
For both honorees, the moment offers an opportunity to pause and reflect on the journeys that brought them here. Their paths are uniquely their own, shaped by mentors, unexpected opportunities, persistence and a shared commitment to work that can improve people’s lives.
“We are proud to celebrate Drs. Ettner and Slamon on this well-deserved recognition. Their inspiring careers reflect the best of academic medicine. Through rigorous scholarship, mentorship and a deep commitment to transformative innovation that has advanced health for all, their seminal contributions have defined their fields and created opportunities for others to follow,” said E. Dale Abel, MD, PhD, chair and executive medical director of the UCLA Department of Medicine. “Their election to the National Academy of Medicine clearly recognizes the impact they have made on medicine and the communities we serve. Drs. Slamon and Ettner join a growing list of NAM members in the DoM, strengthening our collective impact on health and medicine.”
In their own words, Drs. Ettner and Slamon reflect on the people and experiences that shaped their careers, what this honor means to them and the lessons they hope the next generation will carry forward.
Susan Ettner, PhD
Distinguished professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research, Department of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Distinguished Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health
Dean Emerita of Graduate Education at UCLA
When Dr. Susan Ettner learned she had been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, one thought came to mind, borrowed from the Talking Heads, “how did I get here?”
It is a fitting question for someone whose career unfolded in ways she never could have imagined. A first-generation college student, she once imagined a life very different from the academic career she ultimately built. At 20, already engaged, she expected to marry, raise a family and become a homemaker like her mother.
Then someone saw another possibility for her.
Her undergraduate economics professor, Steve DeCanio, noticed her talent and encouraged her to consider graduate school. She took his advice, eventually earning her doctorate in economics from MIT.
“He changed the entire course of my career and life,” Dr. Ettner recalled.
It would become a pattern throughout her career: mentors opening doors, unexpected opportunities leading in new directions, and Dr. Ettner being willing to follow the questions that interested her most. As a junior faculty member at Harvard Medical School, mentor Paul Cleary helped broaden the way she thought about the connections among work, socioeconomic circumstances and health, eventually helping lead her toward behavioral health policy.
The field resonated with something fundamental about what Dr. Ettner wanted from her career, the opportunity to improve people’s lives.
“One reason I love health policy work is the enormous scope of its impact,” she said. “A single policy can affect access to care, treatment and health outcomes of an entire population.”
Her election to the National Academy of Medicine has given her an opportunity to reflect not only on the work that brought her here, but on the values that guided her along the way.
“I am simultaneously astonished, thrilled and humbled by where my journey has taken me,” she said.
Those feelings bring her back to one of her earliest role models: her mother, who taught her to work hard, always give her best effort and help to others, particularly those with fewer opportunities. Dr. Ettner has tried to carry those principles into her research, teaching, mentoring and academic leadership.
For that reason, election to the National Academy of Medicine holds a meaning beyond professional recognition.
“Election to NAM feels like a validation that you can still achieve career success and recognition even if your primary goal is trying to make the world a better place rather than maximizing your own career,” she said.
Her advice to those beginning their own careers reflects that experience. She shares, “go with the flow and don’t be afraid to explore different directions.”
And for young scholars questioning whether they belong or hesitating to pursue an opportunity, she offers another lesson, one she still has to remind herself of.
“Every time I’ve applied or been nominated for something, my inner voice tries to convince me that I’m not good enough,” she said. “I’ve learned to just ignore that voice and try anyway.”
Sometimes the answer has been no. Many times, it has been yes.
“The only cost to trying is a bruised ego.”
For someone who once did not imagine having a career at all, “try anyway” has turned out to be remarkably good advice.
Dennis Slamon, MD, PhD
Professor and chief of the Division of Hematology–Oncology,
Department of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Director of clinical and translational research at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center
If you ask Dr. Dennis Slamon what stands out when he looks back on his career, the story quickly returns to patients.
He remembers the years he and his UCLA colleagues spent pursuing an approach to HER2-positive breast cancer that many doubted would work. He remembers the skepticism and the decision to keep going because the data continued to point them forward. Most of all, he remembers what happened when the work finally reached patients.
Tumors that had resisted available treatments began to shrink.
Seeing those responses was “incredibly gratifying and exciting,” Dr. Slamon recalled. After years of questioning, testing and persistence, the science was doing what he and his colleagues had hoped it could do. It was making a difference for patients.
Now, a career devoted to translating scientific discovery into better outcomes for patients has earned Dr. Slamon one of the highest distinctions in health and medicine, election to the National Academy of Medicine. The honor recognizes outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service. Yet when he reflects on the recognition, he is quick to share it with the people who helped make that journey possible.
“It is not a recognition for just me,” he said. “It’s a recognition for all the people I’ve been able to work with here at UCLA that have been integral in making this story happen.”
He thinks especially of the colleagues and trainees who believed in the work and stayed with it when others were skeptical. To be recognized by his peers and counted among the Academy’s members is deeply humbling, but Dr. Slamon sees the distinction as something he shares with those who helped turn an uncertain idea into an approach that could change patients’ lives.
That journey also affirmed a lesson instilled in him early in his scientific career.
Question your findings rigorously. Listen to criticism. “Kick the tires hard.” But when carefully tested evidence continues to tell you the same thing, trust it.
“Follow the data.” That principle has guided Dr. Slamon through a career that began with a much simpler curiosity. As a child, he watched the family pediatrician care for him and his two sisters in an era when physicians still made house calls. He remembers thinking it would be “really cool” to do something like that. Later, a high school biology teacher sparked his fascination with biology, while mentors that include Winston Anderson and Werner H. Kirsten, helped him develop the rigor and curiosity that would shape his approach to cancer research.
Those experiences continue to influence what he hopes future physician-scientists will take from his career. Be critical of your own work. Listen when others challenge it. Be willing to question your assumptions. But if the evidence remains strong under that scrutiny, have the conviction to keep going.
For Dr. Slamon, that conviction has always been tied to a larger purpose. Scientific discovery matters most when it reaches beyond the laboratory and makes a difference in people’s lives.
“The real thing that’s meaningful and humbling is that we’re doing things that could impact the lives of people and families,” he said. “If you’re able to do that and see that come to fruition, that’s perhaps one of the greatest awards and honors anybody can have.”