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James Plumb, M.D., MPH, clinical associate professor of Family Medicine and associate vice president, Community Service and Public Health, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, has been named “Practitioner of the Year” by the Philadelphia County Medical Society.

Dr. Plumb is being recognized for “his valuable contributions to the community in the area of patient care and community service,” said Medical Society Executive Director John F.X. Trevi.

Dr. Plumb has a special interest in community health, homeless health care, palliative care and community health improvement. He currently serves as director of Jefferson’s Office to Advance Population Health and Center for Palliative Care.

Dr. Plumb has visited the African nation of Uganda on numerous occasions to consult and work with Hospice Uganda, a grassroots program serving that nation’s terminally ill. With only one doctor for every 18,000 people, most physicians reserve scarce resources for healthier patients. Doctors and nurses of Hospice Uganda try to take up that slack by making patients’ last few months more humane and bearable.

Originally invited by the Anglican Church of Uganda to consult about care for the dying, Dr. Plumb helped introduce pain management and communication techniques into the medical education system. He now helps raise funds for Hospice Uganda and helps bring other volunteer doctors and residents to Uganda.

Exchange programs he created also bring fourth-year Jefferson Medical College students to Uganda for community health work. Dr. Plumb received a doctor of medicine degree from Jefferson in 1974 and a bachelor of arts degree with honors from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 1969. He also completed a residency in family medicine in 1977 at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where he served as chief resident.

In 1982, Dr. Plumb returned to his hometown in central Pennsylvania to enter private practice. He decided to return to the world of academic medicine and rejoined the Jefferson faculty in the fall of 1990. In 2003, he completed a Master of Public Health degree at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.