Vaughn I. Rickert was the Donald P. Orr, MD, Professor of Adolescent Medicine within the Department of Pediatrics and the director of the Section of Adolescent Medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine and Riley Hospital for Children. He received his doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Central Michigan University and completed his pre-doctoral training at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine at the Kennedy Krieger Institute. Dr. Rickert authored and co-authored over 100 publications in adolescent health and served on the editorial board of the Journal of Adolescent Health. His research interests focused on adolescent relationship violence and contraceptive use in the population. A new emerging area of research activity is examining contextual factors that can be used to identify behaviorally-based predictors of successful health outcomes among severely obese adolescents and young adults undergoing bariatric surgery. Dr. Rickert was president of the Society for Adolescent Medicine or SAM, a multidisciplinary professional society devoted exclusively to the health and well-being of adolescents.