The ACR/ARHP Honors Members for Contributions to Rheumatology

It’s a career path that’s still going. Dr. Passo has focused primarily on patient care, education and quality improvement, including involvement in multiple clinical trials. He started the Section of Pediatric Rheumatology at Riley Hospital and ran it for 10 years. He moved to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, where he was clinical and fellowship director for 19 years. He has been at the Medical University of South Carolina since 2008.

Dr. Passo has been involved in multiple national pediatric groups and has been a member of the Pediatric Rheumatology Collaborative Study Group since 1984. His teaching honors include the James Cassidy Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Earl Brewer Award from the American Juvenile Arthritis Organization of the Arthritis Foundation.

Q: Being the first pediatric rheumatologist in Indiana means everyone with every question says, ‘Murray’s my guy.’ Was that fun? Scary? Daunting?

A: All three at once. I did my fellowship at Indiana, with Dr. Kenneth Brandt, [MD], and his colleagues, who caught me up as much as they could about pediatric rheumatology. They were down the street from me, so I felt I had some backup. But it was still somewhat daunting.

Q: Is there satisfaction that comes with that, too?

A: There’s a certain sense of ownership. There’s a sense of pride. It’s a nice position to be in a place where you know something about an area that virtually nobody else knows anything about. You can actually develop ways to teach people about it. You can offer a service that was not available before. There’s a lot of responsibility that goes along with being a new subspecialist in a new area.

Q: What changes have you seen over the course of your career?

A: In the ’70s and ’80s, we employed a lot of aspirin; we had a few nonsteroidal drugs. We still employed injectable gold and then there were, of course, glucocorticoids. Luckily, methotrexate came by in the mid 1980s, and it was amazingly better than anything we had been doing before. It still left a lot of room for improvement. Then, in the late 1990s, the biologic agents were introduced. Those have remarkably improved the way we treat patients, and thus, their outcomes are significantly better. The patient’s quality of life is better. It’s amazingly different than it was 35 years ago.

Distinguished Fellowship Program Director Award

David Sherry, MD

Section Chief, Rheumatology, Director of Clinical Rheumatology, Professor of Pediatrics, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia