Researcher Brings Decades of Experience to Osteoarthritis Trial 

Nov. 24, 2025  

Rheumatologist and researcher Jeffrey N. Katz, MD, MSc, brings a wealth of experience and credentials to the Knee Arthroplasty Activity Trial (KArAT), funded in part by the Arthritis Foundation. He’s a professor of Medicine and Orthopedic Surgery and director of the Office of Scholarly Engagement at Harvard Medical School. He holds the Clement B. Sledge, MD, and Thomas S. Thornhill, MD, Endowed Chair in Orthopedic Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is also vice chair of Research and Clinical Director of the Orthopedic and Arthritis Center for Outcomes Research in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery and Division of Rheumatology, Immunology and Allergy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Mass General Brigham. 

The KArAT trial is testing whether one-on-one support from a health coach and small financial rewards can help people become more physically active after total knee replacement surgery, which ultimately could improve their outcomes. Dr. Katz is a co-investigator for KArAT principally charged with handling clinical issues in the design, execution and interpretation of study data. 

Tell us about your background.  

I am a rheumatologist and a clinical researcher. I see patients once a week and spend much of the rest of my time doing clinical research as well as teaching and mentoring younger investigators.  

What drew you to the field of science and research, and arthritis research in particular?  What do you hope to accomplish professionally? 

I’m a physician (rheumatologist) and entered clinical research because I thought I could contribute to improving our understanding and treatment of musculoskeletal problems. I also enjoy working in teams, working with data, writing and brainstorming. So clinical research was a good fit. I’d like to be able to change the way we think of and how we manage common musculoskeletal problems. 
 
Could you describe what you do with KArAT?    

Because I am a clinician investigator, I bring a clinical perspective to KArAT. I provided clinical input to the design of KArAT and I help our team sort out clinical questions, which arise often in determining eligibility and in evaluating adverse events. 

Do you expect KArAT to affect patients either directly or indirectly?    

If our findings show that a combination of financial incentives and motivational interviewing help recipients of total knee replacement to become more active after surgery, interventions such as these might become incorporated in the routine care of persons with osteoarthritis (OA) having total knee replacement. That would be very exciting. 

What are you excited about in OA? What should patients be excited about?   

We are beginning to see how the many facets of osteoarthritis — inflammation, biomechanics, comorbidities, social and behavioral factors — all contribute to patient outcomes. These insights are giving rise to interventions that work to relieve pain and improve function. Our patients with OA are about to be much more active than was the case when I started practice in the 1990s. 
 
What else would you like to share about your involvement with arthritis research?  

I love working collaboratively in teams and have the privilege of working in a center with creative, dedicated and highly collaborative colleagues. We accomplish much more together than we could alone. 

You have been described as an amazing mentor. When you start such a relationship, what are the one to three goals that you hope to achieve? 

My main goal as a mentor is to listen carefully to find out what the mentee’s goals are and to help the mentee achieve those goals. That’s a little different than helping the mentee succeed in achieving my goals. Often the two align: The mentee joins a research team, is super motivated to do the work because they see it as a path toward their goal of becoming a more independent researcher. But sometimes the mentee discovers that their interests are veering more in a clinical or policy or administrative or advocacy-oriented direction. I think my goal in these circumstances is to help the mentee (e.g. through introducing them to colleagues) to achieve these goals.  

Another goal of mine is to model for the mentee a “safe space” in which colleagues can speak with one another with candor and criticize one another’s work rigorously but lovingly. That takes groundwork to build trust, comfort and joy in the environment. Having a safe space means that you don’t have to dance artfully around candid feedback but can offer it with the confidence that it’ll be received as intended, as a way to stimulate growth and excellence in an environment where only a small percentage of papers and grants are accepted. I like to think that Elena Losina, Jamie Collins, Faith Selzer and I have created a safe space, where our team members hungrily seek one another’s rigorous, candid feedback on drafts, presentations and the like, and where the feedback is given forthrightly and directly. 

Is there a moment that a mentor to you impacted the direction of your career? 

I’ve had many mentors, including my parents, and learned valuable lessons from all of them. My dad is 99 and knows little about medicine and nothing about research. But he sure knows about hard work, respect for the most and least powerful in an organization, good manners and not whining. He’s been a very important mentor for me. I’ll suggest that we are all modeling behavior all the time. Younger people pay exquisite attention to what their senior colleagues are doing, both in a macro sense (public speaking, grant strategy) and in the micro, day-to-day things, such as how we talk about our colleagues, mentees, our own mentors, our families, the IRB (institutional review board), etc. They pay close attention to our email style, how we behave in meetings, etc. As a mentee, I’ve paid close attention and found behaviors I model because they align with my values, and behaviors I avoid because they clash with my values. I assume our mentees are doing likewise.