Lisa Cooper, a Liberian-born Johns Hopkins internist
and epidemiologist who conducts landmark
studies designed to understand and overcome racial and
ethnic disparities in medical care and
research, has been named a 2007 fellow by the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The
fellowship comes with a $500,000 grant that Cooper may use
in any way she chooses.
The 44-year-old Cooper has been on the
School of Medicine faculty since 1994, rising through
the academic ranks to become a full professor in the
Division of General Internal Medicine this year.
She also holds a joint appointment in epidemiology and
health policy at the
Bloomberg School of Public
Health and a joint appointment in the School of Nursing.
The fellows are selected on the basis of exceptional
creativity, promise for important future
advances based on a track record of significant
accomplishment and potential for the fellowship to
facilitate subsequent creative work.
"Needed health care reform can only succeed if
barriers to care are ended and the medical
profession tailors prevention, diagnosis and treatment to
individuals' risks," said Johns Hopkins
President William R. Brody. "The MacArthur Foundation, with
the award to Dr. Cooper, is honoring
both her and the principles driving her much-needed
perspective."
"Dr. Cooper is a distinguished member of our faculty,
and her body of work is absolutely critical
to the mission of delivering the benefits and advances in
health care to all who need them," said
Edward D. Miller, dean and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine.
"Johns Hopkins is proud and fortunate to
have her leadership and vision, and we thank the MacArthur
Foundation for its recognition of her
enormous talent."
Cooper, who lives in Columbia, Md., with her husband
and son, said she was "completely shocked,
overwhelmed and honored" at the news — which she said
arrived by telephone call a week before the
public announcement on Sept. 25 — and praised Johns
Hopkins for "giving me an exemplary professional
home" and colleagues, mentors and trainees "who have
brought so much support to my efforts.
"I grew up around people from a lot of different
backgrounds," she said. "Throughout my
career, I've strived to understand how patients and
physicians from different racial, ethnic and social
backgrounds can learn to relate and work with each other to
achieve better care."
Thus far, Cooper's work has focused exclusively on
doctor and patient relationships in the
United States. When asked what she plans to do with the
$500,000, she answered that she hopes to
extend her focus to individuals in economically or socially
disadvantaged communities throughout the
world.
At Johns Hopkins, Cooper's research has sought to
better define barriers to equitable care
across ethnic groups and to identify ways for medical
science to address a growing awareness of racial
and ethnic disparities in disease prevalence, disease risk
and care delivery.
In one study, for example, she and her colleagues
found that African-American patients
treated by African-American physicians were far more
assertive and felt more involved in their own
care than those treated by white physicians, suggesting
that providing patients with access to a
diverse group of physicians may indeed lead to better care
and better health.
Although MacArthur nominees' past achievements are a
factor in their selection, the fellowship
is not considered a reward for past deeds but rather an
investment in a person's originality, insight
and potential, the foundation says. The grant — often
called a "genius grant" — comes without
stipulations or reporting requirements, offering the
opportunity for fellows to accelerate their
current activities or to take their work in new
directions.
Cooper was born in Liberia's capital city, Monrovia,
where her father was a surgeon and her
mother a research librarian. She has two siblings: a
brother who is a psychiatrist and a sister who is a
filmmaker. She attended high school in Switzerland and
moved to the United States in 1980 to attend
college. Cooper earned her bachelor's degree in chemistry
from Emory University and her medical
degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
She completed internship and residency
training in internal medicine at University of Maryland
Hospitals/Baltimore VA Medical Center and
completed a research fellowship in general internal
medicine and a master's degree in public health at
Johns Hopkins in 1993, joining the School of Medicine's
Department of Medicine in 1994 as an
instructor.
One of the first studies she published showed that the
major differences between patients
with depression in primary care and those in mental health
settings were demographic rather than
clinical, offering evidence to support the idea that
cultural and social factors strongly influence
whether and where people seek help for mental illness.
She followed that with a series of studies about
patients' attitudes and preferences regarding
mental illness, including one showing that for
African-Americans, spirituality is an important aspect of
care for depression, and another showing that fears of
addiction to antidepressant medication are
more common among ethnic minorities than among whites.
As Cooper rose through the professorial ranks, she and
her colleagues broadened their
interests in describing barriers that contribute to overall
disparities in health care. In one study, for
example, they found that African-American patients talked
less and asked fewer questions of their
doctors than did white patients. In another study, they
found that blacks were less likely to trust
their physicians and more likely to be concerned about
personal privacy and the potential for harmful
experimentation in hospitals than were whites.
Cooper is currently the lead researcher of two
randomized controlled trials. One of these trials
explores whether teaching communication skills to doctors
and patients with hypertension affects
patient adherence to recommended treatments. The other is
investigating the effects of teaching
doctors and care managers to deliver culturally tailored
and patient-centered care to African-
American patients with depression.
"The best physicians are going to be those who
understand the purpose and the substance of
Lisa Cooper's scholarship and her extraordinary
understanding of clinical care," said Myron E.
Weisfeldt, chair of the Department of Medicine at Johns
Hopkins and physician in chief of The Johns
Hopkins Hospital. "There's no question that her work will
inspire generations to come of doctors and
doctors-in-training."
Cooper follows eight other Johns Hopkins faculty and
alumni who also received MacArthur
fellowships.