Moore Receives Hopkins Distinguished Medical Alumnus Award
By: Julie Poucher Harbin, Senior Writer, DCI
by Rob Odom, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer and Vice President for Duke University Health System, and Julie Poucher Harbin, Senior Writer, DCI
Joseph Odell Moore, through the years. (last two photos by Jared Lazarus and Les Todd)
Archival photo of Joseph Moore, MD, (unknown woman) and Bill Peters, MD (courtesy Duke Medical Archives)
Archival photo of Joseph Moore, MD, in clinic
Joseph Moore, MD, accepts a Duke University SOM Distinguished Faculty Award. Moore first met his wife Alice (pictured) at her mother's hematology lab where she had a summer job and Moore was a med student conducting research. (photo by Jared Lazarus)
Joseph Moore, MD, Moore was medical director of Duke Cancer Center Raleigh for eight years. (photo by Jared Lazarus, 2011)
Joseph Moore, MD, with his daughter Andrea Edith Moore enjoy a Duke-UNC basketball game. Andrea is a critically acclaimed soprano who is a Johns Hopkins University & Yale alumnus.
Joseph Moore, MD, accepts blankets for patients from Hendrick Auto and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. (photo by Karen Butler)
Joe Moore, MD, sits down for some ice cream on his 75th birthday (June 28, 2019), two days before his official retirement from clinical practice.
"Dr. Moore is a world of knowledge, thoughtful, and very dedicated to his work. His patients love him! I am grateful that our paths crossed at Duke. He will truly be missed from clinical practice." -- Thao Doan, PA
Duke Professor Emeritus Joseph Odell Moore, MD, has been recognized with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s highest honor, the Distinguished Medical Alumnus Award. Moore, 76, will be presented with the award in an official virtual ceremony on Friday, May 14.
The award recognizes outstanding professional and personal achievements — including many at Duke Cancer Institute. It was here that Moore, over the course of a 45-plus year career, became a renowned oncologist and researcher specializing in hematologic malignancies.
When Moore retired from clinical practice in June 2019, tributes from colleagues and mentees (current and former) across Duke and beyond poured in. Brilliant, dedicated, considerate, gentle, strong, calming, thoughtful, distinguished, intellectual, collegial, motivational, extraordinary, inspiring, reassuring, gifted, and “an oncology Jedi,” were some of the ways they described him.
Moore graduated with an MD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1970. He completed what he described as an “intense” three-year medical residency at Hopkins in 1975 — with a two-year gap in the middle spent serving in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps in Hawaii — then joined Duke as a Hematology-Oncology fellow.
“That was back in the dark ages,” Moore joked.
The Alumnus Award is the latest honor recognizing Moore’s distinguished career. He is also the recipient of the Leonard Tow Humanism Award, the designation of Master Clinician in Medicine, the R. Wayne Rundles Award for Research, the Wendell S. Rosse, MD Teaching Award, the William Shingleton Award for Caregiver Partnership, and the Duke University School of Medicine Distinguished Faculty Award among others. He has served on the Foundation Board and the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research since its inception in 1993.
But Moore says his greatest honor has been caring for his many patients and their families.
“Every day that I practiced medicine, I have tried to care for each patient as an individual, dating back to my formative years at Hopkins,” Moore said.
As new graduates embark on their medical careers — whether bedside, bench or both, and whether Hopkins, Duke or elsewhere — Moore reminds, “You are always only one step away from being the patient.”
In his wisdom, he offers these words of advice: “Be fearless, but thoughtful. Be confident and aggressive, but collaborative. Verify your own data and information. Brand yourself and work with great colleagues. Take time for solitude, thought and sharing. Be true to yourself. And build for the future.”
