“Dr. Altman was influential in my career as a mentor and now as my best friend,” says Dr. Hochberg. He and his wife were present for Dr. and Mrs. Altman’s 50th anniversary this past summer.
The admiration is clearly mutual. Reflecting on Dr. Hochberg’s qualities as a collaborative epidemiologist, Dr. Altman remarks, “Marc had an MPH before many other people did, and his work has contributed to epidemiology ballooning in importance in the field of osteoarthritis and osteoporosis. Not only is Marc very bright, but he’s able to take in a lot about the field and bring a ‘big tent’ in understanding to the discussion at hand.”
Collaborations Enrich & Inform
Dr. Simon shares Dr. Altman’s assessment of Dr. Hochberg: “He’s creative, thoughtful and innovative in approach, experienced in interpretation of clinical evidence and experienced in doing systematic reviews and in conceptualizing therapeutic responsiveness in the disease state.”
Those qualities came into play when a University of North Carolina master’s thesis candidate asked Dr. Hochberg to consult on her project. Joanne M. Jordan, MD, MPH, professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, was a medical student at Johns Hopkins from 1977–81, when Dr. Hochberg was then on faculty. Ironically, the two did not have occasion to meet then.
Later, when her master’s paper at UNC became a funded grant, Dr. Hochberg became a consultant as the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project (JoCo OA) was in the development stages. Even though the two had not met while she was at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Hochberg was familiar with a paper Dr. Jordan had written (with coauthors Carole Dorsche, MD, and Tom Zizic, MD) as a medical student during her time there. “That really impressed me,” she says, “that he took the time to find out about that paper and already knew a lot about me before he came to visit here.” What has been more impressive, though, is Dr. Hochberg’s penchant for inclusiveness on research projects. “Marc is a terrific thinker, speaks very clearly and is really interested in bringing people into the tent, particularly younger people. That is a contagious thing,” she says.
Since Dr. Hochberg’s initial consultations with Harold L. Cook, PhD, and John G. Fryer, PhD, on the JoCo OA protocol, the fruitful collaborations with Dr. Jordan, the current principal investigator of the JoCo OA Project, have continued. Generally seen as a pivotal study, the project has gone through phases I (1991–98) and II (1999–2005) and is currently in phase III, yielding important information regarding the existence of ethnic differences in OA, demonstrating higher rates of both radiographic and symptomatic OA prevalence among African Americans than formerly thought.
