Each year, ASRM honors individuals who have provided distinguished service to ASRM. Recipients are selected based on their scientific, leadership, organizational, political, or societal service contributions to ASRM, reproductive medicine, and/or reproductive medicine patients. Lee Rubin Collins, JD, is known for over two decades of advocacy to make fertility treatment universally accessible and to keep it legal. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, she began her career at Ropes & Gray in Boston, one of the country’s preeminent law firms, where she was one of the first women litigators to make partner. Her personal experience of secondary infertility, however, motivated her to change careers and dedicate herself to infertility awareness, equity, and policy change.

Ms. Collins was asked to join the Board of Directors of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association in 2002. In that role, she launched RESOLVE’s advocacy to repel threats to reproductive medicine, first from the President’s Council on Bioethics and then from the growing “embryo-personhood” movement. In 2014, she received RESOLVE’s highest honor, the Barbara Eck Founder’s Award. In 2019, she became the first patient advocate elected to ASRM’s Board of Directors. During her three-year term, her work on the Board Publications Committee inspired a deep interest in issues of research integrity and misconduct. It led her to help found ASRM’s groundbreaking Research Integrity Committee, which she now co-chairs.

Ms. Collins was honored to serve on the ASRM Ethics Committee from 2014-2019, where she contributed in particular to the Society’s first opinions on disparities in access to care and on the ethics of planned oocyte cryopreservation. Ms. Collins previously has served on the boards of The Howard and Georgeanna Jones Foundation, RESOLVE of the Bay State, and the New England Fertility Society. She has numerous publications and presentations on access to care and advocacy, including her TEDx talk, “Infertility and Politics.” She is grateful to ASRM and to the outstanding mentors and friends in this field who gave her the chance to contribute to advancing reproductive justice.

Previous recipients of the Suheil J. Muasher, MD, Distinguished Service Award:

2023 Lee Rubin Collins, JD
2022 The ASRM COVID-19 Task Force
2021 Andrea Braverman, PhD 
2020 Kevin Doody, MD
2019 Edward E. Wallach, MD
2018 Louis V. Depaolo, PhD and The Fertility And Infertility Branch of The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
2017 Barry S. Verkauf, MD, MBA
2016 G. David Adamson, MD
2015 Judy E. Stern, PhD
2014 Barbara L. Collura, MA
2013 Judith F. Daar, JD
2012 Eli Reshef, MD
2011 Alan H. DeCherney, MD
2010 David N. Curole, MD, John T. Queenan, MD
2009 Roger Kempers, MD, MS, Kamran Moghissi, MD
2008 Paul G. McDonough, MD, Miriam B. Rosenthal, MD
2007 John A. Robertson, JD, Duane Alexander, MD
2006 Jacob M. Mayer, Jr, PhD, David I. Hoffman, MD
2005 Lee Lee Doyle, PhD, Marguerite K. Shepard, MD
2004 Stuart S. Howards, MD
2003 Andrew E. Good, MD, Florence P. Haseltine, PhD, MD
2002 Richard D. Amelar, MD, Lawrence Dubin, MD
2001 George A. Hill, MD
2000 Ronald Linhardt, MD, Donna Vogel, MD, PhD