Jan Werbinski, MD, associate professor emerita in the Department of Surgical Sciences at WMU Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine (WMed), was honored in September by the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA) as a recipient of the 2026 INSPIRE Award for leadership, mentorship, patient care, advocacy, and service.
Dr. Werbinski was one of more than 30 women physicians from across the country who were named by AMWA as recipients of the award on Wednesday, September 23. The INSPIRE Awards, which are given by the AMWA Leadership Council in September during Women in Medicine Month, recognize women physicians who provide inspiration to other physicians or students through expert and compassionate patient-oriented medical care, or through mentorship, or service to the community. Recipients are nominated by colleagues, mentees, supervisors, students, or collaborators.
“Thank you to the national group of AMWA students who I have mentored for the nomination,” Dr. Werbinski said. “They will be the standard bearers of the sex and gender curriculum we are creating together.”
During a career that has spanned more than four decades, Dr. Werbinski has been a renowned educator and supporter of sex- and gender-based medicine, advocating for a revolution in the delivery of healthcare to women. That passion led her to push for changes in the way current and future physicians learn about sex- and gender-appropriate medicine and she became a national voice on the issue through her work with AMWA and her leadership of AMWA’s Sex and Gender Health Collaborative.
Dr. Werbinski has been a member of AMWA for the length of her career and led efforts at AMWA to advocate for the establishment of a medical specialty in women’s health. In 2020, she served as president-elect of AMWA, then president in 2021, and immediate past president in 2022.
At WMed, Dr. Werbinski is secretary of the medical school’s AMWA branch, AMWA@WMed, and serves as an advisor and mentor within the student AMWA group. As part of that role, she is hosting an AMWA dinner meeting for students at her home in Portage on Saturday, October 3, beginning at 4 p.m. Additionally, she teaches courses on sex and gender-based medicine for first-, second-, and third-year students in the “Bias in Women’s Health” course.
“I am very proud that WMed is one of the 262 international institutions which teach sex and gender specific concepts in medicine, Dr. Werbinski said. “It is the cornerstone of personalized medicine. What is more personal than the sex and gender of the patient?”
Outside of the medical school, Dr. Werbinski serves on the Girl Scouts Heart of Michigan (GSHOM) Board of Trustees, and in that role, she worked with students – dating back to the MD Class of 2020 – from the AMWA branch at WMed to create “First Aid Fanatics,” a course that provides an introduction to first aid and a curriculum in medical knowledge appropriate for the different age groups within the Girl Scouts. The course curriculum was created by WMed students and it is one of the highly utilized badge offerings at GSHOM.
In their announcement of this year’s recipients of the INSPIRE awards, AMWA leaders said, “These accomplished women in medicine reflect a wide array of clinical specialties and a variety of settings from large academic centers and highly specialized centers of excellence to community care centers dedicated to underserved populations.”
“The 2026 Honorees are truly dedicated physicians, and we are grateful to them for their many contributions to health care,” said Connie Newman, MD, a past president of AMWA and founding member of the AMWA Leadership Council.