The Lorraine Parent Racusen Renal Pathology Fund
Support a Fellow in Renal Pathology
The Lorraine Parent Racusen Renal Pathology Fund is an endowed fund established in the Department of Pathology in 2012 to honor Lorraine Parent Racusen, M.D., Professor Emerita and former Director of the Renal Pathology Laboratory. The income from the fund supports a fellow in the Division of Renal Pathology.
Dr. Racusen earned both her undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Vermont. Following graduation from medical school, she completed a post-doctoral research fellowship in gastroenterology at Yale University School of Medicine. In 1979, she came to the Johns Hopkins Department of Pathology to complete her residency training in anatomic pathology and her fellowship training in renal pathology. Dr. Racusen then spent two years as a visiting fellow in the laboratory of William Finn, M.D. at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In 1983, she joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in Pathology, rising through the ranks to become a full Professor in 2001—the 74th woman in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the third in the Department of Pathology to achieve that rank. During her tenure, she served as Director of the Department’s Renal Pathology Laboratory from 1996 to 2004. She retired from the faculty in 2014.
Dr. Racusen’s research interests included nephropathology, acute renal failure, and renal transplantation, focusing on injury to the kidney, morphologic aspects of native kidney and renal allograft injury and rejection, utilizing in-house biopsies and consultant cases, and computerized morphometric techniques. In 1991, she joined with fellow Johns Hopkins Pathology alumnus, Kim Solez, M.D., FRCPC, to organize the first meeting to establish the International Banff Classification System which standardized the criteria for the histologic diagnosis of kidney allograft rejection. For more than three decades, they continued to oversee the improvement of the Banff classification, organize the Banff meetings, and promote the use of the classification at the international level. In March 2017, Drs. Racusen and Solez received the Gold Medal Award from The Catalan Society of Transplantation at a joint meeting of the Catalan Society and the Banff Foundation held at the University of Barcelona in Spain. The honor was bestowed in recognition of their crucial contributions to transplant pathology. Dr. Racusen stepped down from the Banff board of directors in 2019.
During a distinguished career that spanned four decades, Dr. Racusen authored more than 150 peer reviewed publications and 25 book chapters, and edited four books. She was a member of numerous professional groups, and served on the editorial boards of the Journal of American Society of Nephrology and the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. A dedicated medical educator, Dr. Racusen developed and served as the first director of the ACGME-accredited renal pathology fellowship at Johns Hopkins, mentoring 19 fellows as well as scores of residents and junior faculty.
If you would like to honor Dr. Lorraine Racusen's outstanding career, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution in her honor to the Lorraine Parent Racusen Renal Pathology Fund through the Department of Pathology's secure online giving form by clicking the button below.
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