Academy Member Neal Baer wins WGA's Valentine Davies Award

Academy member Neal Baer was awarded the Valentine Davies Award for public service from the Writers Guild of America, west at the Guild's first-annual Honorary Service Awards.

Baer is the executive producer of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU). A member SVU's original staff, he shared five Emmy nominations for Outstanding Drama Series as producer. The hit series pioneered an unprecedented level of medical accuracy and realism in primetime television. A recent Harvard study revealed most Americans learn more about health-related problems and treatment from series television like SVU than from their own doctors.

In addition to being a Harvard Medical School graduate and pediatrician, Baer also serves as a public-health advocate. in 2002 Baer joined WGAw president Victoria Riskin as co-chair of Hollywood, Health, and Society (HH&S), a joint venture among the Annenberg School of Communications, the Norman Lear Center, the Center for Disease Control, and the Writers Guild, to educate writers on a wide range of medical issues. Baer also currently serves on the boards of many health-care related organizations, including RAND Health, Children Now, the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (NOFAS), The Media Project, and the Venice Family Clinic, where he often treats children without medical insurance as a volunteer physician on weekends. He also teaches Health Communications at the University of Southern California.

The Valentine Davies Award is given to writers who have contributed to the entertainment industry, as well as the community at large, and who have brought dignity and honor to the profession of writing everywhere.