Each year, the College awards individuals whose work and dedication advance and strengthen the specialty. Spanning continents and subspecialties, this year’s recipients include individuals from across the community of imaging intervention and therapy. Commendations will be awarded at ACR 2024, the annual meeting taking place in April in Washington, D.C.
The Gold Medal is awarded by the BOC to radiologists, radiation oncologists, medical physicists and other distinguished scientists for their extraordinary service to the ACR or to the discipline of radiology. Service to radiology can be in teaching, basic research, clinical investigation or radiologic statesmanship, such as outstanding contributions in working with the ACR, other medical organizations, government agencies and quasi-medical organizations.
“This courageous woman defiantly turned an ultimate death sentence fearlessly into a challenging life reward.” — Vani Vijayakumar, MD, FACR
“I want to live the best I can for as long as I can,” reads a post at the top of Amanda Crowell Itliong’s social media — a testament to a life spent lifting up others and giving voices to those who did not have one. Itliong is the first patient ever to receive an ACR Distinguished Achievement Award.
Known for her compassion, openness and kindness, Itliong devoted her life to changing healthcare and the patient experience for the better. Although Itliong passed away on May 6, 2023, her work on the representation and experience of patients in radiology and healthcare as a whole will have a lasting impact.
Itliong forged a lifelong career of service: first in 2002 as the University of West Florida’s director of learning and volunteerism, then at the renowned Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University in 2005. From there, she joined the United Way for Southeastern Michigan as its family literacy manager, and then as the director of North Carolina State University’s Center for Student Leadership, Ethics and Public Service.
The work was personal for Itliong, who lived with a rare form of ovarian cancer for 14 years. After gut-wrenching pain sent her to the emergency room, doctors initially diagnosed her with a twisted ovary. She was coming out of surgery, and the first words she heard after waking up were from a nurse: “I’m sorry to hear you have cancer.”
“That was the first time she heard anything about there being cancer,” recalls her father, Michael Crowell. “And Amanda knew it shouldn’t be that way. From then on, she was a patient advocate. That was her life’s work for almost 15 years. She didn’t want anyone else to go through something like that.”
Following her fourth cancer recurrence, she returned home to Michigan — not to rest, but to intensify her work as an advocate, activist and researcher for patients even as she was undergoing her own treatment. “Amanda wasn’t fond of fighting and battle metaphors when it came to cancer,” says her partner, Patrick Neal. “While she didn’t consider herself ‘at war,’ she did as much as any human being possibly could have to raise awareness of the disease and help find a cure and help every patient living with it in the meantime.”
With her beloved rescue dog, Bieber, at her side, Itliong gave dozens of speeches and presentations to doctors, residents, medical students and administrators at numerous medical schools and professional associations. She was a founding member and principal researcher for BVOGUE, a collaborative team funded by the Cornell Center for Health Equity that gathered data on Black patients’ experiences with cancer and made recommendations based on that information. Itliong also received numerous awards and accolades, including the 2020 Inspiration Award from the Michigan Cancer Consortium.
Itliong profoundly touched the specialty. As a patient, she once had to pretend to be her referring physician to ask her radiologist questions. That and other frustrations with reporting led to her focus on radiology so that patients could be connected with radiologists as physicians rather than words in a report.
“She didn’t understand why she had to go through so much just to ask her doctor [including radiologists] a question,” Crowell says. “Between that and the language being different each time she had a new report, she decided to focus on radiology because it was important for patients to connect with radiologists.”
She served on the ACR Patient- and Family-Centered Care Commission (PFCC) Quality Experience Committee for eight years, becoming the first Patient Engagement Committee co-chair in the College’s history. Itliong also forged other paths for the ACR: She was the first and only patient to present at an ACR Grand Rounds. In 2022, she served as the first-ever patient keynote speaker at the Virginia Radiological Society, where she shared her story and how she used social media to help other patients struggling with healthcare interactions.
“This courageous woman defiantly turned an ultimate death sentence fearlessly into a challenging life reward,” says Vani Vijayakumar, MD, FACR, chief of nuclear medicine at UMMC.
Urging doctors to “listen to patients who are actually sick,” Itliong pioneered “scanxiety,” a term that helped explain the anxiety that patients feel even when undergoing routine care and waiting for results. She recorded a podcast for the ACR Bulletin, developed patient-friendly animation videos and authored an article for Radiologyinfo.org — all in the final year of her life.
“Amanda contributed so much to this world and gave of herself fully all the way to her final breath,” says Tessa S. Cook, MD, PhD, vice chair of the PFCC. “She is the best example of why a commission dedicated to patient- and family-centered care is both necessary and beneficial to the College.”
Itliong was also known as a painter, sculptor and mixed-media artist, often sending handmade cards to loved ones for all occasions. Perhaps most notably, she was a friend to everyone, finding connection with each person she encountered. Multiple PFCC members noted how she taught them to be compassionate and helped them understand the fears patients experience through diagnosis, imaging and treatments.
Cook says, “I learned so much from her on how to be a better doctor and a better person.” ACR PFCC staff note that Itliong will be remembered for “her humor and wit in the face of cancer, her continued work ethic, her compassion for all patients, her drive to improve healthcare and her genuine open heart. Amanda forged a path where there was none.”
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