WPSR’S PAUL BEESON AWARD
&
DR. BRUCE AMUNDSON
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

THE PAUL BEESON AWARD
Each year, WPSR confers the annual Paul Beeson Award on an activist in the field of health care, or health advocacy, who has made a substantial contribution to peace, justice, and health in Washington state. Dr. Beeson served as Chair of Medicine at Yale, Oxford, and Emory Universities, and as distinguished Professor Emeritus at the Seattle Veterans Hospital. A member of WPSR, he was a prominent and outspoken advocate for nuclear disarmament.


THE DR. BRUCE AMUNDSON LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
The Bruce Amundson Lifetime Achievement Award honors individuals whose lives and work embody the values of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility: a deep commitment to human health, peace, justice, and a safer, more sustainable world.

The award is named for Dr. Bruce Amundson, a longtime leader if WPSR whose service to the organization spans four decades. A physician, advocate, board member, and former WPSR President and national board member, and co-founder of the now-disbanded SpokanePSR chapter, Bruce played a pivotal role in shaping the organization that WPSR is today. 

When Bruce became WPSR President in 2014, the organization was at a critical juncture, facing dissolution. Recognizing the need for renewed purpose, stronger member engagement, and a more active presence in the health advocacy community, Bruce devoted himself to rebuilding the chapter. Working tirelessly with staff, members, prospective supporters, partners, and donors, he helped restore WPSR’s momentum and lay the foundation for its remarkable growth.

Under his leadership, WPSR grew from an organization without paid staff into an influential and respected statewide health advocacy organization with a professional staff, a growing membership, robust programs, and a leading role in coalitions working to address some of the most consequential threats to human health. Bruce was instrumental in helping establish the foundation for WPSR’s enduring role as a powerful health voice on issues including nuclear weapons, economic inequity, and the climate crisis; constituting a strong board of directors to ensure strategic planning and program vision; creating the WANW (Washington Against Nuclear Weapons) Coalition in an effort to re-establish a state-wide anti-nuclear movement, now the largest in the US; adding the Economic Inequity program to our mission, the only chapter that does so; achieving chapter financial solvency, helped by adding fund raising as a specific element to the chapter’s long history of annual meetings.

But Bruce’s legacy is about more than organizational growth. It is about the conviction that health professionals have a responsibility to speak out when the conditions that threaten human health extend far beyond the walls of a clinic or hospital. It is about bringing evidence, compassion, courage, and persistence to the pursuit of a healthier and more just world. And it is about building an organization capable of carrying that work forward for generations.

The Bruce Amundson Lifetime Achievement Award commemorates that legacy by recognizing individuals whose sustained contributions have made a significant and lasting difference in the pursuit of WPSR’s mission. Recipients exemplify the qualities that Bruce brought to his own work: dedication, leadership, service, vision, collaboration, and an unwavering commitment to protecting human health and human survival.

In naming this award for Bruce, WPSR honors not only what he accomplished, but also the example he set—and the responsibility we share to carry that work forward.

Dr. Bruce Amundson Lifetime Acievement Award Recipients

2022: Dr. Bruce Amundson
2023: Dr. David C. Hall
2026: Dr. Stephen Bezruchka

Paul Beeson Award Recipients

  • Judith Lipton, MD

  • Governor Mike Lowry

  • Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen

  • Giovanni Costigan, PhD

  • Jim and Shelley Douglass

  • Kay Bullitt

  • Sonja Anderson

  • Mayor Norm Rice

  • Danaan Parry

  • Hazel Wolf

  • Linda Erwin, MD

  • Congressman Jim McDermott, MD

  • Todd Martin

  • Mam McMurray

  • Anci Koppel

  • Betty Tabbutt

  • Jim Russell

  • Governor Christine Gregoire

  • Mary-Wynne Ashford, MD

  • Gerald Pollett, JD

  • T.J. Johnson

  • Jackie Hudson

  • Dick Blakney, MPH

  • James Carter Trombold, MD

  • William 'Bix' Bichsel, SJ

  • Glen Milner

  • Tom Carpenter

  • Robert & Gerri Haynes

  • Congressman Adam Smith

  • Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal

  • Jean Walkinshaw

  • Howie Frumkin

  • Estell Williams, MD & Edwin Lindo

  • Sen. Joe Nguyen & Rep. My-Linh Thai

  • Dr. Bessie Young

  • Dr. Tim Dellit