NKF Spring Clinical Meetings 2024 Award Winners

Health care professionals who have made significant contributions to the field of kidney disease were honored at the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) Spring Clinical Meetings 2024 in Long Beach, California.

Martin R. Pollak, MD, accepted the David M. Hume Award, the highest honor given to a distinguished scientist-clinician in the field of kidney and urologic diseases. He is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and chief of nephrology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Dr. Pollak’s research focus is to understand the genetic basis of kidney disease. He is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, and the National Academy of Sciences.

The J. Michael Lazarus Distinguished Award went to David M. Charytan, MD, MSc. The lectureship recognizes those whose research has yielded novel insights related to renal replacement therapy. Dr. Charytan is director of the nephrology division and the Norman S. Wikler Professor of Medicine at New York University (NYU) Langone Medical Center. He was a founding steering committee member of the National Institutes of Health Hemodialysis Novel Therapies Consortium. His research focus is chronic dialysis, diabetic kidney disease, and cardiovascular disease in the setting of chronic kidney disease (CKD).

Mary B. Leonard, MD, MSCE, received the Donald W. Seldin Award in recognition of excellence in clinical nephrology. She is the Arline and Pete Harman Professor and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford University, director of the Stanford Maternal and Child Health Research Institute, and physician-in-chief of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. As a department chair at Stanford, she established an Office of Child Health Equity to address health disparities for children with chronic diseases, including CKD. She previously served as president of the American Pediatric Society.

Morgan Grams, MD, PhD, was honored with the Garabed Eknoyan Award. Dr. Grams is the Susan and Morris Mark Professor of Medicine and Population Health in the Department of Medicine at NYU and co-director of NYU’s Division of Precision Medicine. She also serves as co-chair of the Kidney Disease Improving Global Outcomes organization. Dr. Grams co-leads the global Chronic Kidney Disease Prognosis Consortium and maintains active research programs in multiomics of kidney disease as well as pharmacoepidemiology in CKD.

The Shaul G. Massry Distinguished Lecture Award was presented to Suzanne Watnick, MD, FASN. Dr. Watnick is a professor of medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle and a nephrologist at the Puget Sound Veterans Administration Medical Center. Previously, she was chief medical officer at Northwest Kidney Centers in Seattle, the world’s first dialysis organization; primary liaison for research operations between the Kidney Research Institute (KRI) and Northwest Kidney Centers; and nephrology program director at Oregon Health & Science University.

Kathy Schiro Harvey, MS, RDN, CSR, received the Joel D. Kopple Award for contributions in renal nutrition. Recently retired, she was director of nutrition for Puget Sound Kidney Centers (PSKC) in Snohomish County, Washington. She serves on the PSKC Foundation board. Harvey was instrumental in creating the Washington State Council on Renal Nutrition and the Northwest Renal Dietitians organization. She served on the Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative Chronic Kidney Disease Workgroup and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Technical Expert Panel on mineral bone health.

The Excellence in Kidney Transplantation Award was given to Robert A. Montgomery, MD, DPhil, FACS. Dr. Montgomery is chair and professor of surgery at NYU Langone Health and the director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute. He previously served as chief of transplant surgery and director of the Comprehensive Transplant Center at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Montgomery was part of the team that developed the laparoscopic procedure for live kidney donation, now the standard throughout the world.

Sankar Niranjan, MD, FASN, received the Medical Advisory Board Distinguished Service Award for his outstanding educational activities and community service to advance the NKF’s mission at a local level. Dr. Niranjan is an attending physician and nephrologist at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, Connecticut, and a community-based faculty member at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine in Farmington. He has participated in NKF’s Kidney Early Evaluation Program in Connecticut and facilitated screenings at inner-city community events and minority places of worship.

This year’s recipient of the Carol Mattix Award, named for a home dialysis training nurse who worked tirelessly to improve patients’ lives, was Lisa Koester, ANP, CS, CNN-NP, MSN. Koester started as a dialysis nurse in the 1990s and has held various roles related to dialysis. After receiving a master’s degree in nursing and an adult nurse practitioner certification, she joined Washington University School of Medicine’s renal division as a renal nurse practitioner, where she has worked for 24 years.

Glenda V. Roberts received the Celeste Lee Award honoring her patient activism. In 2018, she joined the University of Washington Center for Dialysis Innovation and the KRI as director of external relations and patient engagement. Her role expanded to include chief operations and strategy officer for the university’s Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Center for Transformative Research. She was part of the NKF–American Society of Nephrology Taskforce Reassessing the Use of Race in Diagnosing Kidney Disease and has participated in many other kidney-related initiatives.

Suma Nair, PhD, MS, RD, was the recipient of the Public Service Award. Dr. Nair is associate administrator for the Health Systems Bureau in the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). She leads a portfolio of programs to improve access to care and strengthen public health and health care systems by increasing access to organ and blood stem cell donation and transplantation. Previously, she led the Office of Quality Improvement in the HRSA’s Bureau of Primary Health Care.