Roy Altman, MD, was a father, a husband, a teacher, a physician, an editor, and a mentor. He died November 30 as a result of complications related to Parkinson’s disease.
Altman was an editorial advisory board member for MDedge Rheumatology/Rheumatology News since the publications’ start in 2002. He also treated patients and taught students at the University of Miami and the University of California, Los Angeles. A father of four adult children and a grandfather to nine grandchildren, Altman was also a husband to Linda, “his lifelong partner.”
Dr. Roy Altman
“[He] had this tremendous editorial expertise to be able to manage different journals at the same time without conflict,” said Marc Hochberg, MD, MPH, a professor of medicine, epidemiology, and public health and head of the division of rheumatology and clinical immunology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore. “This was done in the days before electronic publishing, in the days before everything was being done on the computer.”
Publications where Altman served as editor include Osteoarthritis and Cartilage and Seminars in Arthritis and Rheumatism.
In addition to editing articles, Altman also had an active patient panel, while lecturing and traveling internationally, Hochberg said. Altman accomplished this “while maintaining a very active family life,” remembers Hochberg, who learned from Altman about ways to achieve work-life balance.
“That’s important when you’re a junior faculty member – and you’re trying to develop your academic career – that you prioritize what you need to do to be successful in the world of academic medicine, especially rheumatology,” said Hochberg, who described Altman as a “very close friend.”
Teacher, physician, and mentor
John FitzGerald, MD, PhD, MBA, chief of clinical rheumatology at the University of California, Los Angeles, looks back on the more than 15 years that Altman drove 1 hour each way to teach fellows about topics including osteoarthritis. “He really valued teaching. ... that was a lot of his focus,” said FitzGerald, who adds that Altman also enjoyed his relationships with patients.
Altman joined the University of California, Los Angeles, faculty as a professor of medicine in the division of rheumatology and immunology in 2003. Before arriving at UCLA, he was chief of rheumatology and immunology at the University of Miami for many years.
“His patients loved him because he was providing treatments and services that they really had trouble finding elsewhere,” FitzGerald said. Altman entrusted FitzGerald with giving him injections between patients or during lunch for the arthritis that increasingly bothered him.
“He was very appreciative of having the care provided to him. ... he was also sort of playful and teasing,” FitzGerald said.
Altman also took on the role of teacher at home, according to his daughter, Evie. “My dad loved to diagnose; he enjoyed piecing together the disparate physical and radiologic clues to determine the cause of disease or pain. When I was much younger, he taught me how to spot someone with Paget’s Disease from the other end of the room.”
“He loved teaching, imparting his knowledge to others,” she added, remembering the slide sessions Altman presented to his students at their family home. “We loved [the slide sessions] because we could get pizza for dinner, and we got really good at spotting the biological markers of rheumatoid arthritis.”
Aaron Altman said his father was “impassioned by bringing people alleviation of their pain and suffering. It drove him to his very core.”