Dr. Jonathan R. Diamond, M.D.

Jonathan R. Diamond, M.D. was a founding member of Hershey Kidney Specialists, Inc. in 2000. Dr. Diamond was raised in New York City. He attended Cornell University from 1971-1975, receiving a Bachelors of Science in Biological Sciences and Genetics. While at Cornell he conducted undergraduate research on chromosome morphology culminating in publications in Experientia and Cytogenetics and Cell Genetics as a recipient of a research stipend from the National Foundation of the March of Dimes. After graduation, he entered medical school at the State University of New York-Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, New York and graduated in 1979.

Dr. Diamond completed his Internship, Residency, and Chief Residency at Harvard Medical School's New England Deaconess Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts from 1979-1983. He spent the next three years in a Nephrology fellowship at Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital, the Brigham Women's Hospital, and the Department of Pathology. In 1986, he returned as a faculty member of the Harvard Medical School to the New England Deaconess Hospital achieving the rank of Assistant Professor of Medicine in 1988. During those years, he established a research program, as a Clinician-Scientist Awardee of the American Heart Association and Physician-Scientist Awardee from the National Institutes of Health, focusing on the biological mechanisms of why kidneys leak protein, often resulting in kidney failure, and therapeutic interventions to minimize or prevent progressive kidney damage. In temporal sequence with his laboratory investigation, Dr. Diamond worked closely with patients at the Joslin Clinic in Boston to better understand and treat the adverse effects of diabetes on the kidney. During his stay in Boston, Dr. Diamond authored numerous clinical and laboratory papers published in such journals as the American Journal of Physiology, the American Journal of Pathology, and the New England Journal of Medicine. During his final year at the New England Deaconess Hospital the interns and residents awarded him with the Teacher of the Year plaque.

In 1989, Dr. Diamond accepted a position as Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Nephrology at Penn State's Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and rose to the rank of full Professor of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Physiology in 1994. In addition to his clinical and teaching responsibilities, he developed his own research laboratory under the auspices of an Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association and an Independent Investigator Award from the National Institutes of Health. These highly competitive awards were in addition to research awards from the National Kidney Foundation as well as five successive years of funding from the Baxter Healthcare Company, an industrial leader in the dialysis field. While at Penn State, Dr. Diamond had post-doctoral fellows studying in his laboratory from the United States, China, Australia, and the Netherlands. Their work in his laboratory focused on the mechanisms of progressive kidney failure. Dr. Diamond was also named the Chairman of the Veteran Administration's MERIT Review Committee for Nephrology Research from 1996-1998. Throughout Dr. Diamond's tenure at both Harvard and Penn State, he has published over 100 original articles, review articles, book chapters, and abstracts. He has been a Visiting Professor to the University of Washington in Seattle, the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, the University of Iowa in Des Moines, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and the University of Cincinnati. He has presented invited lectures at both the American Society of Nephrology and the International Society of Nephrology as well as being a member of the Speakers Bureaus for many pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer, Merck Co., and Bayer.

On February 2000, the nephrologists and transplant surgeons from Penn sate moved their clinical practices to the private practice/community setting in order to provide top flight board-certified, academically-trained, and an investigationally-based style of clinical medicine to the wider general population of the greater Harrisburg area encompassing Dauphin, Lebanon, Lancaster, Schuylkill, Berks, Cumberland, York, Adams, Perry, Juniata, Franklin, and Fulton counties. Since 2000, Dr. Diamond has been the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS) Transplant Nephrologist for Pinnacle Health System at the Harrisburg Hospital. He has continued his now 21 year clinical interaction with that program's director, Dr. Harold Yang. During this decade, over 200 patients from the Hershey Kidney Specialists practice have received their kidney transplants at the Harrisburg Hospital. Dr. Diamond is the Medical Director for Fresenius Medical Care hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis programs in care centers in Carlisle, Palmyra, and now Camp Hill.