Rafael E De La Hoz, MD

Rafael E. de la Hoz, MD, MPH, MSc, ATSF, FACP, FCCP, is a board certified pulmonologist, occupational medicine specialist, and internist. He has had a career research and clinical interest in occupational respiratory toxicology and occupational obstructive and interstitial lung diseases. He joined Mount Sinai in late 2002 to establish the diagnosis and treatment protocols, and characterize the heterogeneous group of chronic lower airway and other diseases temporally associated with occupational toxicant exposures at the WTC disaster site. From his initial clinical descriptions, he proceeded to the investigation, as the principal investigator of two federally funded research projects, of qualitative and quantitative chest CT scan measurements to characterize those lower airway diseases, investigate the adverse impact of obesity on those diseases,  and the transitions to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other chronic lung diseases in the Mount Sinai WTC occupational cohort. 

Besides his active research and clinical practice, Dr. de la Hoz consults as an impartial pulmonary and occupational medicine specialist to the New York State Workers' Compensation Board, and, since August 2016, as an spirometry quality advisor to the Mount Sinai WTC Health Program Clinical Center.  He is a Medical Review Officer (MRO) and is certified with the National Registry of Certified Medical Examiners (NRCME) for the Department of Transportation.  He is a Fellow of the American Thoracic Society, the American College of Physicians, and the American College of Chest Physicians, and plays active roles in different committees of the European Respiratory Society, the American Thoracic Society, and the International Commission for Occupational Health.  For his work with the WTC responders' cohort, he received the 2024 lifetime achievement award from the American Thoracic Society, Terrorism and Inhalational Disasters Section.

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