The 2019 ACR Award Winners & Distinguished Fellows

Excellence in Investigative Mentoring Award

Patricia Katz, PhD, professor of medicine, health policy and urology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), received the Excellence in Investigative Mentoring Award for her contributions to the rheumatology profession through outstanding and ongoing mentoring.

After receiving a master’s degree in psychology in 1974 and a doctorate in educational measurement from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, in 1982. Dr. Katz came to the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in the mid-’80s as a staff researcher and joined the faculty in 1993. Based in the Division of Rheumatology, she has worked with investigators across the campus, including those in the divisions of pulmonary and critical care medicine and hospital medicine, the departments of urology and surgery and the Institute for Health Policy Studies.

Dr. Katz, who also serves as vice chair for UCSF’s Institutional Review Board, joined the ACR and the ARP in the early 1990s.

“The ACR is one of the foundations of all of my professional activities,” she says. “It’s given me tremendous opportunities for professional growth and to develop collaborations here at UCSF and elsewhere over the past 30 years.”

Her research has followed two main paths—the measurement of patient-centered outcomes and the impact of lifestyle factors, primarily obesity, physical inactivity and sleep, on clinical and patient-centered outcomes. It has also included a strong emphasis on the study of disparities in health outcomes.

In addition to authoring more than 250 papers, she has received grants from a variety of sources, such as the NIH and Rheumatology Research Foundation.

As co-director of the Rheumatology Division’s mentoring program at UCSF, she has worked with over two dozen postdoctoral students and fellows as a career and research mentor. She has actively mentored a number of junior rheumatology faculty members at the university and other institutions.

Over the years, Dr. Katz has served on the ARP Program Committee and the ACR Subcommittee on Diagnostic, Classification and Response Criteria. She has also served on the Rheumatology Research Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Council and Board of Directors, while regularly reviewing grant applications for the foundation, NIH and international rheumatology funding agencies. Dr. Katz is also a former editor in chief of Arthritis Care & Research and current co-editor in chief of ACR Open Rheumatology.

Over the past 20 years, the ACR and the ARP have honored Dr. Katz for her work. She received the Distinguished Scholar Award in 1997, STAR Award in 2005, Presidential Award in 2003 and 2010 and the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.

She says this award is different: “It acknowledges my contribution to the next generation of researchers and educators, helping them follow their own direction,” Dr. Katz says.