Four from Johns Hopkins Medicine elected to the National Academy of Medicine

Four members of Johns Hopkins Medicine have been elected to the National Academy of Medicine. The announcement of 100 new members was made today in conjunction with the academy's annual meeting, held virtually this year.

The National Academy of Medicine is an independent organization of leading professionals from diverse fields including health, medicine, and the natural, social and behavioral sciences. It serves alongside the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering as adviser for the nation and the international community. Through its domestic and global initiatives, the academy works to address critical issues in health, medicine, and related policy. Membership is considered one of the highest honors in health and medicine.

Image caption: The four Johns Hopkins Medicine faculty members elected to the National Academy of Medicine are (from left) Rexford Ahima, Alex Kolodkin, Redonda Miller, and Justin McArthur

New members are elected by current members through a selective process that recognizes people who have made major contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences, health care, and public health.

Read more about the new members from Johns Hopkins Medicine:

Rexford Ahima is a professor of medicine, public health and nursing; director of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism; and Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of diabetes in the schools of Medicine, Public Health, and Nursing. Ahima's research focuses on the molecular links between obesity and diabetes. Specifically, he has studied how hormones from fat cells act in the brain and other organs to control feeding and metabolism. The research may help scientists develop new ways to prevent and treat obesity, as well as related diabetes. Ahima joined the Johns Hopkins Medicine faculty in 2016. He leads the Johns Hopkins Diabetes Initiative, which aims to advance basic, clinical and population research.

Alex Kolodkin is the Charles J. Homcy and Simeon G. Margolis Professor in the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His research focuses on the connections between brain cells called neurons and how neural connections are formed during development. He discovered a family of proteins called semaphorins that help neurons extend their armlike structures, called axons, to their targets, enabling them to send messages to nearby cells. Kolodkin joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 1995 and is deputy director of the School of Medicine's Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences.

Redonda G. Miller is president the Johns Hopkins Hospital and associate professor of medicine at the School of Medicine. As president of the 1,162-bed academic medical center, she has championed clinical care focused on efforts to improve the patient experience and further expanded the hospital's community care through programs that address the social determinants of health. Miller arrived at Johns Hopkins as a medical student in 1988 and has served as vice chair of clinical operations for the Department of Medicine and senior vice president of medical affairs for the Johns Hopkins Health System. She continues to see patients at her internal medicine practice at Johns Hopkins.

Justin C. McArthur is the John W. Griffin Professor and director of Neurology and is neurologist-in-chief at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is the founding director of the Johns Hopkins/National Institute of Mental Health Research Center for Novel Therapeutics of HIV-associated Cognitive Disorders and the Sheikh Khalifa Stroke Institute at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. McArthur treats patients with autoimmune neurological disorders, such as multiple sclerosis, and neurological infections, such as HIV. He developed a technique that uses tiny biopsies near the surface of the skin to evaluate nerve damage in people with diabetes or HIV or who have undergone chemotherapy treatment for cancer. McArthur's laboratory studies the mechanisms that underlie HIV-associated dementia, with the goal of developing new therapies to prevent or treat it.