Mark Renneker, MD

Mark Renneker, now an associate clinical professor in UC San Francisco’s Department of Family and Community Medicine, has put forth extraordinary efforts to combat cancer in the United States and abroad for more than a quarter-century. Highlights include:

• Serving as principal investigator for a three-year, $600,000 national American Cancer Society demonstration project that provided cancer education and screening services to low-income patients at the West Oakland Health Center.

• Spending 13 years (1984-1997) as an attending physician at the South of Market Health Center, an inner-city clinic in San Francisco.

• Giving more than 25 years of volunteer service with the American Cancer Society, serving on numerous committees, councils, task forces and divisions.

• Organizing more than 20 conferences on cancer and preventive medicine, presenting cancer information at more than 100 colleges and universities, and serving as an editorial board member of many scholarly journals, including "The Journal of Cancer Education."

• Founding the Surfer’s Medical Association, which has sought to improve health conditions of often-poor populations near surf destinations around the world. An outgrowth of its work is an ongoing community health project in the Fijian village of Nabila, in which association efforts led the population to stop smoking cigarettes in 1990. Their cessation has lasted for more than a decade, and a scientific paper on the project eventually won international awards and was featured on ABC’s "World News Tonight" in 1999.

"Doc is a highly respected surfer, but his dedication to help others at home and abroad is what makes him so deserving of the Rell Sunn ‘Queen of Makaha’ Award," said Steve Blank, chairman for this year’s Luau & Longboard Invitational. "He has touched countless lives in his career already, including Rell Sunn herself."

Renneker, working with another physician and Rell’s husband, Dave Parmenter, helped treat Rell over the last months of her 15-year battle with cancer.

"We pursued every imaginable therapy to help her, ranging from mainstream and experimental therapies to alternative and esoteric treatments, and finally to optimizing home hospice care," Renneker said. "It was an honor to have worked with Rell Sunn."