Michaeline Fedder, Government Relations Director in Maryland, was presented with the Joan Stine Leadership Award at the Maryland statewide annual tobacco conference on May 8, 2018. The award, named for the former Director of the Center for Health Promotion, Education, and Tobacco Use Prevention and the Maryland Department of Health, Joan Stine, honors individuals for their service to the people of Maryland; their action on a local or state level to reduce tobacco use, their work to improve public health through tobacco regulation and control and has show fairness, equity, and professional demeanor in their duties. Michaeline embodies this and more.
Michaeline chaired the Smoke-Free Maryland Coalition from 1999-2005, which played a major role in the passage of the Maryland Clean Indoor Air Act of 2007 and three tobacco tax increases between 1999-2008. She served on the committee that produced the Maryland Comprehensive Cancer Control Plan 2004-2008; Our Call to Action. The coalition helped to ensure that the historic Master Settlement Agreement dollars coming into Maryland, established into the Cigarette Restitution Fund are allocated, at least in part, toward the prevention of tobacco-caused disease. Michaeline is a long-time leader of the Maryland Public Health Association (MdPHA): she served as President in 1992, and as the Affiliate Representative to the APHA Governing Council for many years. In 2014, MdPH named its annual award for legislators in her honor. The Michaeline R. Fedder Legislator of the Year Award is given to local, state or national legislators who show the consistent commitment to public health within Maryland.
She is described by her colleagues as warm and loving with a firm leadership style who personifies a relationship builder. Smart, funny, determined, outspoken, caring, genuine, fierce, formidable, forceful, fearless, focused but most of all a friend.
She has made invaluable contributions to the tobacco prevention and control efforts in Maryland, likely either lengthening or saving the lives of hundreds of Marylanders.
Congratulations, Michaeline!
Congratulations, Michaeline! Well deserved!
Congratulations Michaeline! So well deserved as all of us who worked in tobacco control know the honor of working with the amazingly dedicated and beautiful Joan Stine. She was a loving mentor to me and so many others. Please give her my love – Carol Winner, MPH
Michaeline, Don was and is so very proud of you. You have always been an incredible inspiration to me and to Jim. May God continue to bless you and the work that you do for so many.