ince 1982, the United States (US) Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Health Resources Administration, in collaboration with the Federation of Associations of Schools of the Health Professions (FASHP), has sponsored the Secretary’s Award for Innovations in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Writing Competition (Secretary’s Award). This competition illustrates DHHS’s dedication to health promotion and disease prevention initiatives by encouraging new ideas among health professions students throughout the United States. The Secretary’s Award encourages students to propose and/or implement innovative projects stressing health promotion or disease prevention, overarching goals established in Healthy People 2010.1 Before 1998, veterinary medical student participants in the Secretary’s Award competition received only lesser awards of “honorable mention.”2–4 During the 1998/1999 Secretary’s Award competition, however, two proposals from veterinary medical students won second place,5, 6 and one received the third-place award.7 Last year, during the 1999/2000 Secretary’s Award competition, veterinary medical students won two awards: the third-place award in the interdisciplinary competition and the secondplace award in the single discipline competition. Both of the veterinary medical winners of the 1999/2000 Secretary’s Award were previous winners of the Hill’s Public Health Award, a writing competition modeled on the Secretary’s Award but confined to veterinary medical students. This article will discuss the two writing competitions and briefly review the 1999/2000 award-winning proposals submitted by veterinary medical students.