Ochsner Health has announced the recipient of the 37th Annual Alton Ochsner Award Relating Smoking and Disease: Claudia Henschke, PhD, MD. She is Director, Early Lung and Cardiac Action Program (ELCAP) and Professor of Radiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York.
Claudia Henschke, PhD, MD
This prestigious award is named after Alton Ochsner, MD, who cofounded Ochsner Health in New Orleans and published the first paper linking smoking and health in 1939. It recognizes scientists who have made major contributions to the relationship between smoking and disease and who have advanced the development of major prevention and treatment modalities.
“It is an honor to receive this award for my work in lung cancer screening,” said Dr. Henschke. “The ability to be able to detect early lung cancer by screening and change it from an essentially incurable disease to one with a high cure rate, saving countless lives, is a culmination of 30 years of work.”
Dr. Henschke continued: “I have had the rewarding experience of first introducing low-dose CT screening in 1992, when almost nobody really believed it would work, and then partnering with a global community of researchers known as the Early Lung Cancer Action Program [I-ELCAP)] This has allowed screening to achieve mainstream acceptance.”
Leonardo Seoane, MD
“At Ochsner, we support pioneers who explore complex health-care issues and develop innovative treatments relating to smoking cessation and disease prevention, because we know collaboration is a critical component of research and disease prevention,” said Leonardo Seoane, MD, Chief Academic Officer for Ochsner Health. “We commend Dr. Henschke’s dedication and passion to this important topic.”
