UF’s Schiebler receives College of Medicine’s Lifetime Achievement Award

University of Florida distinguished service professor emeritus of pediatrics Gerold L. Schiebler, M.D., a tireless advocate for Florida’s children, has been named the 2004 recipient of the UF College of Medicine’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

A pediatric cardiologist who served as chairman of UF’s department of pediatrics from 1968 to 1985, Schiebler is perhaps best known for his efforts to expand the state Children’s Medical Services program, which coordinates and funds health care for economically disadvantaged children with chronic illness or other special needs. He has served with the organization in various capacities from 1971 to the present and was its statewide director from 1973 to 1974. Schiebler currently serves as the program’s statewide consultant.

Introducing Schiebler at the college’s annual Research Day faculty dinner April 27, Terence R. Flotte, M.D., the Nemours eminent scholar, professor and chairman of pediatrics, called him a “legend in academic pediatrics” and recounted a stunning litany of Schiebler’s accomplishments in both the medical and governmental worlds.

“He taught us that the key to academic success in a clinical department is making the benefits of a rich academic environment both relevant and accessible to the clinical arts, and to make that cutting-edge clinical care that emerges from an academic environment available to all children, regardless of their means,” Flotte said.

“That is truly his enduring legacy, and we are all very fortunate to enjoy it.”

For almost 30 years, Schiebler worked in the political arena as the UF Health Science Center’s associate vice president for external relations, promoting the interests of the center and Shands at UF, as well as clinics in Tallahassee and Washington, D.C. During that time, he led efforts to establish the state’s Regional Perinatal Intensive Care Centers Program, and to establish a state and federal poison-control center network accessible nationwide via a single toll-free telephone number.

Schiebler is the only UF faculty member to be elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences exclusively on the basis of career academic achievements at UF, Flotte said. In 1992, Schiebler became the only physician ever to receive, in the same year, both the Abraham Jacobi Memorial Award from the pediatrics section of the American Medical Association in tandem with the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Doctor Benjamin Rush Award for citizenship and community service from the AMA.

He served as president of the Florida Heart Association in 1973-74, president of the Florida Medical Association in 1991-92 and president of the Florida Medical Association Political Action Committee in 1996-98. At UF, an eminent scholar’s chair in pediatric cardiology, a lectureship and a pediatric scholarship/fellowship have been established in his name.

UF College of Medicine Dean Craig Tisher, M.D., presented the award to Schiebler, who began his brief acceptance speech by quipping that he had wondered why he’d been urged to attend the banquet. He credited his German immigrant parents for helping shape his professional outlook.

“They always said that this country took us in and we need to give something back to this nation because they have been so generous,” Schiebler said. “I hope I’ve done that. Finally, I’m privileged to have been married to Audrey Lincourt Schiebler for 50 years, because she’s been such a phenomenal bellwether and a gyroscope for me over many, many demanding times.”

A 1954 graduate of Harvard Medical School, Schiebler joined the UF department of pediatrics faculty in 1960. He rose to the rank of professor in 1966, associate vice president for health affairs for external relations in 1985 and distinguished service professor in 1992. He became an emeritus faculty member in 2001.