Local anesthesiologist and pain medicine specialist Dr. David Ciochetty will be recognized during the Kentucky Medical Association annual meeting at the organization’s leadership dinner Saturday in Louisville.

Ciochetty, a flight surgeon with the U.S. Army, is receiving the KMA Community Connector Leadership Program award for being part of the steering committee for the Western Kentucky University Physician Leadership Initiative. The initiative targets opioid abuse and Commit to Quit, which is designed to decrease the incidence of smoking. Randy Capps, Cecile Garmon and several physicians from Owensboro, Glasgow and Warren County started the program.

“It was because of Randy Capps. He does a lot of physician mentoring. He polled a lot of local physicians he knew,” Ciochetty said. “He wondered if it would be of interest in Bowling Green. It took off like wildfire. The KMA thought of us as a grassroots organization.”

The Physician Leadership Initiative seemed to be a good fit for Bowling Green, Ciochetty said.

“Bowling Green is seen as a neutral site,” he said. “It’s not in Louisville and it’s not in Lexington.”

The KMA is the association for physicians of Kentucky of all specialities. It has 50 percent penetration, said KMA Executive Vice President Patrick Padgett. The organization is private, and physicians aren’t required to be members.

“A couple of years ago we developed a community connector program for physicians. We find physicians that have been involved in communities in specific ways,” he said. “It not only honors them for what they’ve done, but we promote them as professional leaders in their community to try to change bad statistics that we have for the health of Kentucky such as smoking, cancer rates and obesity. We’re trying to get physicians engaged in their community to change that.”

The doctors must be in leadership roles to qualify for the award, Padgett said. They must serve in a leadership role within medicine such as in a local hospital, practice or local medical society. They must serve in some type of leadership position in the community at large, such as the local school board, public health board or church and they must participate in some form of public education or public health activity in the past year.

“We try to give them help and ideas with what that can be,” he said.

— Follow features reporter Alyssa Harvey on Twitter @bgdailynews or visit bgdailynews.com.