Posted on December 7, 2001 at 10:55 a.m.

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Dick Dowling Briggs, Jr., M.D., was named the 16th Master Fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians in Philadelphia at the convocation ceremonies of the college’s annual meeting November 4.

The title of Master Fellow is the highest honor bestowed on any of its Fellows by the 15,000 members of the ACCP. In its 67-year history, only 11 American and four international Fellows in the college have been designated Master Fellow. The honor is conferred upon a Fellow in the college who has achieved and deserves special recognition in medicine due to outstanding personal character, positions of honor and leadership in the broad domain of medicine, eminence in medical practice or research and service to ACCP.

Currently, Briggs is emeritus professor and emeritus eminent scholar chair in pulmonary diseases at UAB. He also serves as chief medical officer for Best Doctors Worldwide Healthcare Services.

Briggs received his bachelor of science from the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, and his medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. Following an internal medicine residency and chief residency under Dr. Walter Frommeyer at UAB Hospital, he completed a pulmonary fellowship training and joined the faculty of the School of Medicine at UAB. With the exception of two years in the United States Air Force, his entire academic career has been spent on the faculty at the University of Alabama School of Medicine as a clinician, a distinguished teacher and a clinical scholar.

At UAB, he has served many roles including director of the division of pulmonary and critical care medicine, vice chairman of the department of medicine and president, CEO, and medical director of the University of Alabama Health Services Foundation.

Briggs has been the president of the American College of Chest Physicians, a founding member and president of the Association of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Program Directors, chairman of the American Board of Internal Medicine Pulmonary Disease Board and a member of the Board of Governors of the American Board of Internal Medicine. In 1995, he received the “Breath of Life” award from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and he was named laureate of the Alabama American College of Physicians. Briggs was honored by the American College of Physicians in 1997 when he became a Master in ACP.