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Msnbc.com Names Johns Hopkins Doctor One of 100 History Makers in the Making - 02/05/2010

Msnbc.com Names Johns Hopkins Doctor One of 100 History Makers in the Making

Lisa Cooper, M.D., M.P.H., on list of influential African-American leaders
Release Date: February 5, 2010
Lisa Cooper, M.D., M.P.H.
Lisa Cooper, M.D., M.P.H.

February 5, 2010- Praised for her work “closing the racial gap in health care,” Lisa Cooper, M.D., M.P.H., a professor of general internal medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has been named one of “100 History Makers in the Making” by msnbc.com.

Cooper joins such national luminaries as talk show host Oprah Winfrey, U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin and pop music icon Beyonce Knowles on the list of African-Americans notables, which also includes fellow Maryland achievers Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and new Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

Cooper says she isn’t used to seeing physicians — herself included — mentioned in the same breath as such high-powered movers and shakers. “We’re not usually treated as rock stars,” she says. “We’re usually doing what many people see as mundane or boring. I am humbled and honored to be considered a history maker in the making.”

In her research Cooper has sought to better define barriers to equitable care across ethnic and racial groups, and to identify ways for medical science to address growing disparities in disease prevalence, disease risk and care delivery in these populations. In 2007, she was named a fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which came with a $500,000 “genius grant.”

Msnbc.com quotes an Oregon physician who says: “Lisa has really been one of the pioneers in doing the hard work of trying to figure out what it is that’s giving rise to these disparities, and she’s really focused on how doctor-patient relationships and encounters between doctors and patients might contribute to the problem.”

Cooper also holds appointments in epidemiology, health policy and management, and health behavior and society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and in the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.

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