The Association of Academic Health Centers International (AAHCI) awarded the 2023 Innovation Award to Prof. Valeria Aoki, President of the International Relations Committee of Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo and President of the AAHCI Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), for creating the AAHCI Student Leadership Initiative (ASLI). The official ceremony to honor and present the award took place on April 12, 2023, in Washington, DC, United States, during the 2023 AAHCI Global Innovation Forum.

ASLI is a project that promotes an open call for students from health centers that are members of the AAHCI, from the regional LAC, for them to send proposals sharing new ideas that address important and current issues on the education of health professionals. This is an opportunity for students to demonstrate their creativity and leadership.

Professor Valeria Aoki explained that the initiative invites medical students to submit innovative plans on how to support new standards for training and medical education programs. “This is a current need, as teaching/learning rapidly shifts to virtual platforms”. Prof. Valeria added, “The abrupt shift to fully online medical learning during the pandemic brought many challenges. I was excited to see so many creative and even low-cost projects designed by AAHCI-LAC students and their mentors to improve digital medical education".

The ASLI program was held for the first time in 2021, with the theme “Virtual Medical Education”. In 2022, the approach was “Education Professionals: the convergence of Climate Change and Health”. Finalist students presented their projects at the AAHCI Global Health Innovation Forum..