National Jewish Health Faculty Earn Three Awards From the American Thoracic Society

Three members of the National Jewish Health faculty will be honored for contributions to pulmonary medicine this week at the American Thoracic Society (ATS) International Conference in San Francisco.

Charles Daley, MD, chief of the Division of Respiratory and Mycobacterial Infections at National Jewish Health, will receive the 2016 World Lung Health Award for his efforts around the world to improve diagnosis and treatment of patients with tuberculosis, the world’s most deadly infectious disease. For more than two decades, Dr. Daley has worked with physicians, hospitals, health ministers and others to stop the spread of tuberculosis in countries around the world, from Russia to China, India to South Africa. He currently holds leadership positions in the World Health Organization and the Stop TB Partnership. A significant focus of his current efforts is improving patient access to second-line antibiotics for drug-resistant tuberculosis. 

Irina Petrache, MD, chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at National Jewish Health, will receive the 2016 Elizabeth A. Rich, MD, Award given each year to a woman who has made significant achievements in pulmonary medicine, demonstrated leadership and shown dedication to mentoring. Before leading one of the largest pulmonary divisions in the nation at National Jewish Health, Dr. Petrache was Vice Chair of Research at Indiana University. She also chaired the ATS International Conference for three years. At this year’s conference, she will speak at a seminar on successfully competing for an academic job, chair a ‘Mythbusters’ symposium and co-author eight scientific posters.

James Crapo, MD, professor of medicine at National Jewish Health, will receive the ATS Assembly on Clinical Problems 2016 Sreedhar Nair Lifetime Achievement Award in COPD. Dr. Crapo chaired the Department of Medicine at National Jewish Health from 1996 to 2004. Since 2007, he has been co-principal investigator of COPDGene, an NHLBI funded multi-center study of 10,500 smokers, former smokers and control subjects to discover genetic factors that contribute to the development of COPD and develop new therapeutic approaches to control the third leading cause of death in the world. At the conference this year, COPDGene investigators are presenting 33 scientific abstracts, ranging from genetic risk factors to plasma biomarkers to identify COPD subtypes, to gender and hormonal differences in COPD.