Kristen Shipherd

Constellation Quality Health’s 2023 Harris Memorial Award winner is Dr. Jeffrey Kuremsky, Oncology Service Line Quality Physician Leader with CaroMont Regional Medical and Cancer Centers in Gastonia, NC.  Dr. Kuremsky has devoted his entire career to patients diagnosed with cancer and is known for demonstrating a steadfast commitment and compassion to the needs of each patient, taking individual time for questions and concerns. 

Dr. Kuremsky is integrated at all levels within his patients’ treatment providers: oncology, radiation, chemotherapy, and imaging specialists, as well as insurance companies. When treatment delays occur such as with authorizations, Dr. Kuremsky is diligent in conducting peer-to-peer physician consultations and providing thorough explanations for resolution. 

Dr. Kurmensky’s nominator, Kimberly Miller, offered this testimonial: “Dr. Kuremsky is consistent in his belief in medical care, positive thinking, personal resilience, and finding ways to strengthen the entire treatment process for patients and providers alike. His service is a blessing and an asset to cancer patients in North Carolina.” 

Dr. Joseph T. Bell founded Pembroke Pediatrics in 1998. Now his practice has a staff of over 25 and offers childhood obesity prevention. He is a general pediatrician at Children’s Health Pembroke and Managing Partner of Children’s Health of Carolina. Dr. Bell is the first Lumbee pediatrician and first Native American pediatrician in North Carolina.

In addition to working as a general pediatrician in Pembroke, he worked in Indian Health Service in Oklahoma for five years and worked on the Catawba Reservation in Rock Hill, SC as a pediatrician for 24 years.

Currently, he serves on the North Carolina American Indian Health Board and the AAP Committee on Native American Child Health and is a member of AAIP Association of American Indian Physicians.

He was nominated by Dr. Katie Lowry who says “he has been a mentor to many Native and non-Native students, be it to pursue medicine as PA/or Physician or navigating the ins and outs of advising for pre-med., or other science-based careers. His practice hosts students from multiple PA programs across the state as well as medical school pediatric rotations, winning many teaching awards throughout his career. He recruited the first, second and third Lumbee female pediatricians, as we all worked with him during our first years out of pediatric residency. It is an honor and privilege to call him a colleague and friend.”

Dr. Karen Harum, a Neurodevelopmental Pediatrician, is the founder of The Clinic for Special Children in Wilmington. Her practice strives to provide accurate diagnosis, whole-child treatments, specialty care, and consultation for children with developmental disabilities and behavioral problems, including special expertise in the neuroscience of learning and autism. As her nominator, Practice Manager Pasha Krise, shares, “Dr. Harum is the most dedicated pediatrician that we have known. She is adored by her patients, many of whom have high special needs and behaviors that would scare other physicians. In those times, she leans in. She spends countless hours after her practice is closed to help parents and children in crisis.”

“As a leader in her practice, she is cultivating the next generation of selfless clinicians, urging them to look at whole-child healthcare and teaching them to manage patients with compassion and firm direction. Dr. Harum motivates her full staff by being an example of dedication to patient care and family care in determinants of health. She also motivates parents of the special needs community to advocate for services, offers preventative care, to treat brain damage and disease with hope for the hopeless. This often means just one word from a wordless child, but through a wide range of medicines and therapeutic care, families champion the small milestone for their children. Dr. Harum inspires and leads the Special Needs community and her small staff, teaching younger staff to lean in the hopeless, and offer compassion, humanity, and understanding. She does not shy away from long hours and has grit and determination for her Clinic, staff, and patients. Dr. Harum, as attested by her patients and staff, is the definition of a leader in the neurodevelopmental field in NC, and she is dedicated endlessly to her patients. She motivates and inspires both caregivers and staff to step up and into the role as the new generation of clinicians and role models who put our special needs and the most vulnerable populations’ needs first.”