Patricia Charache (December 26, 1929 – September 12, 2015) was a physician specializing in infectious disease and microbiology. She was a faculty member at the

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHUSOM) is the medical school of Johns Hopkins University, a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1893, the School of Medicine shares a campus with the Johns Hopkins Hospi ...

for more than 50 years, retiring as a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Pathology, Medicine, and Oncology.

Early life and education

She was born in

Maplewood, New Jersey Maplewood is a township in Essex County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The township is an inner-ring suburban bedroom community of New York City in the New York metropolitan area. As of the 2020 United States census, the township's populatio ...

. Her parents, Harold S. Connamacher and Carye-Belle Henle were both physicians. She graduated from

Columbia High School Columbia High School may refer to: *Columbia High School (Huntsville, Alabama) *Columbia High School (Georgia) *Columbia High School (Florida) *Columbia High School (Idaho) *Columbia High School (Illinois) *Columbia High School (Mississippi), a Mis ...

in 1948 and enrolled in

Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...

, where she met

Samuel Charache Samuel Charache (January 12, 1930 – January 29, 2019) was an American hematologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University. He led the research team that discovered the first effective treatment for sickle cell disease, a painful and sometim ...

; they were married in 1951. The couple moved to New York and she attended

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...

, graduating in 1952. She received her M.D. degree from

New York University School of Medicine NYU Grossman School of Medicine is a medical school of New York University, a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1841 and is one of two medical schools of the university, with the other being the Long Island School of ...

in 1957. As a student there she developed her interest in microbiology. She did an internship in internal medicine at Baltimore City Hospital (now Mercy Medical Center), followed by clinical and research fellowships at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

, the Division of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins, and the Department of Pediatrics at Harvard University Medical School.

Career

In 1964 she was hired by Johns Hopkins as an instructor in infectious diseases. From 1966 to 1969 she also served as the assistant chief of medicine at Baltimore City Hospital, which carried with it an academic appointment at the

University of Maryland School of Medicine The University of Maryland School of Medicine (abbreviated UMSOM), located in Baltimore City, Maryland, U.S., is the medical school of the University of Maryland, Baltimore and is affiliated with the University of Maryland Medical Center and Me ...

. In 1967 she became the director of the Hopkins microbiology laboratory, which was initially part of the Department of Medicine. The laboratories later moved to the Department of Pathology as the Division of Microbiology, which she directed for 20 years, while also doing clinical practice and research in infectious diseases. She also held a joint appointment in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the

Johns Hopkins School of Public Health The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is the public health graduate school of Johns Hopkins University, a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. As the second independent, degree-granting institution for research in epi ...

. Her teaching responsibilities encompassed medical students, graduate students, pathology residents, and fellows in infectious diseases and microbiology. She published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and papers, and a dozen books or book chapters. She was particularly known for her contributions to the fields of microbiology, infectious disease, and patient safety. In 1992 she was named a full professor in the Hopkins School of Medicine - only the 30th woman to be named a full professor in the institution's 100-year history. She continued to direct the microbiology division and its laboratories until 1993, when she took on several roles within the Department of Pathology, particularly in the areas of quality improvement and outcomes research, finally retiring in 2015 shortly before her death.

Awards and recognition

Patricia Charache received the 2010

bioMérieux bioMérieux SA is a French multinational biotechnology company founded and headquartered in Marcy-l'Étoile, France, close to Lyon. bioMérieux is present in 44 countries and serves more than 160 countries through a large network of distributor ...

Sonnenwirth Award for Leadership in Clinical Microbiology.bioMérieux Presents 2010 Sonnenwirth Award for Leadership in Clinical Microbiology to Patricia Charache

, May 24, 2010. Accessed August 26, 2019. A Hopkins conference room in the Medical Microbiology Division of the Department of Pathology is named for Charache.

Personal life

She was married to Samuel Charache for 64 years until her death. They had a daughter and four grandchildren.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Charache, Patricia American women physicians Johns Hopkins University faculty American pathologists American microbiologists Columbia High School (New Jersey) alumni People from Maplewood, New Jersey Physicians from Baltimore Physicians from New Jersey Oberlin College alumni Hunter College alumni New York University Grossman School of Medicine alumni 1929 births 2015 deaths American women academics 21st-century American women