The 2022 ACR Awards of Distinction

“I am immensely honored to receive this award,” says Dr. Lockshin. “However, the real honor lies elsewhere—in the patients who challenged me to answer their questions. The real honor also lies with those who mentored me, the colleagues who worked with me, the trainees who helped seek answers to the patients’ questions, the superb support of the hospital for which I worked, and my amazing family.”

Dr. Lockshin received bachelor and medical degrees from Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., and completed his residency at the Second (Cornell) Medical Division of Bellevue Hospital, New York City, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City. As an officer of the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he served as assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh. He was a rheumatology fellow under Charles Christian, MD, at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, New York City. 

From 1970 to 1989, Dr. Lockshin was on the faculty of three New York City institutions: Weill Cornell Medicine, the Hospital for Special Surgery and New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where he was elected a faculty member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. Between 1989 and 1997, he was extramural director and then acting director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIH), Bethesda, Md. In 1997, he returned to the Hospital for Special Surgery and New York-Presbyterian Hospital. 

Dr. Lockshin served as the second vice president of the American Rheumatism Association, precursor to the ACR; chair of the Rheumatology Committee of the American Board of Internal Medicine; and editor in chief of Arthritis & Rheumatology. He has served on committees of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. 

His research interests currently include diagnostic uncertainty, antiphospholipid syndrome, gender ratios in autoimmune disease and pregnancy in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE); past interests have included central nervous system lupus, T cell immunity in rheumatic disease, hepatitis B-associated polyarteritis nodosa and epidemiology of rheumatoid arthritis in coal miners. He has chaired international conferences on many of these topics. 

Dr. Lockshin has written more than 300 scientific papers and textbook chapters and three books for lay audiences about doctor-patient relationships, Guarded Prognosis (1998), Dancing at the River’s Edge (2010) and The Prince at the Ruined Tower: Time, Uncertainty, & Chronic Illness (2017). 

Distinguished Clinical Investigator Award

Joel M. Kremer, MD, professor of medicine emeritus, Albany Medical College, N.Y., received this year’s Distinguished Clinical Investigator Award, given annually to a clinical scientist making outstanding contributions to the field of rheumatology. Dr. Kremer, a Philadelphia native, graduated from Temple University School of Medicine, Philadelphia, in 1974, where he was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. After training at Albany Medical Center (AMC), N.Y., and Albany Medical College, he joined the faculty there and became professor of medicine and head of the Division of Rheumatology in 1990. He served as the Pfaff Family Professor of Medicine.