The 2022 ARP President’s & Merit Awards

Lifetime Achievement Award

Among the ARP’s highest honors is the Lifetime Achievement Award, which is presented to a current or past member who has made meaningful and lasting contributions to the field of rheumatology. This year’s award recipient is Marian T. Hannan, MPH, DSc, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston, and a senior scientist and co-director of the Musculoskeletal Research Center at the Hinda & Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew Senior Life, Boston, as well as a former president of ARP (then known as ARHP) in 1998–99.

Dr. Hannan has been an ARP member since 1988 and has enjoyed parallel growth of her career along with growth within the ARP.

“I am incredibly honored to receive the ARP Lifetime Achievement Award, especially as the ARP is my professional home and a community chockful of incredible, dedicated people,” says Dr. Hannan.

“I have spent a ‘scientific lifetime’ in the ARP/ACR, presenting talks, helping on committees, serving as editor of Arthritis Care & Research and giving my all to our organization. Rheumatology is a team sport, and I am fully grateful to every player, coach, talent scout, advisor and sponsor (thank you RRF [Rheumatology Research Foundation]!) for the honor of our play over the years.”

For a decade earlier in her career, Dr. Hannan worked with the Boston University Arthritis Center, and over the past 25 years she has conducted research at the Marcus Institute.

Dr. Hannan conducts research focused on osteoarthritis, foot biomechanics, fractures and osteoporosis. She is widely published, with more than 200 articles presented in over 50 scientific journals in the medical field, including Arthritis Care & Research, The New England Journal of Medicine, Arthritis & Rheumatology and the Journal of Bone & Mineral Research.

She has been the principal investigator on a number of National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants and has had continuous NIH grant funding since 1996. She collaborates closely with investigators in Boston, using the combined expertise of bioengineers, rheumatologists, nutritional epidemiologists, geneticists, molecular biologists and statisticians to quantify risk factors contributing to musculoskeletal diseases. Dr. Hannan reviews grant applications nationally and internationally.

At Harvard Medical School, Dr. Hannan teaches clinical epidemiology and population health to first-year medical students. She also lectures in the school’s geriatrics fellowship program. Dr. Hannan is the course director of the Frailty Course at Harvard School of Public Health. Her mentoring of young investigators includes many scientists and medical fellows in the Boston area, as well as early stage investigators across the U.S. and Canada through the U.S. Bone & Joint Initiative’s Young Investigator Initiative. One of her great joys is mentoring young researchers as they grow their careers. She is an award-winning mentor and enjoys contributing to the next generation of innovative medical research.