Edward Giannini, MSc, DrPH
Professor, Division of Rheumatology, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center; Professor of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, Ohio
Background: A Chicago native, Dr. Giannini is a clinical epidemiologist by training. He earned his MSc in immunology from Arizona State University in Tempe, Az., in 1973 and his Doctor of Public Health five years later from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. His career has always focused on pediatrics, including 30 years as the senior scientist of the Pediatric Rheumatology Collaborative Study Group. A founding member of the Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance, he is a well-published author who also served as the principal investigator of the project that led to the discovery of the efficacy of methotrexate in juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) and developed the ACR Pediatric 30, a landmark set of criteria adopted in 2002 to help treat JRA.
Q: What about the award means the most to you?
A: Pediatric rheumatology is kind of an orphan disease. Rheumatology itself is an adult specialty, so it has special meaning for someone who has worked in pediatrics his whole life to win this award because you’re winning it in an adult specialty, where you’re competing against very high-power adult rheumatologists. For pediatrics and myself to be recognized, it means that now, toward the end of my career, yeah, what I did really did count for something.
Q: How bad is the staffing deficit for pediatric rheumatology?
A: We even have more of a shortage of pediatric rheumatology scientists. There are very, very few. I was probably one of the first clinical epidemiologists in pediatric rheumatology…it really, since 1976, has come a long way, undoubtedly. Nevertheless, we trail badly the adult rheumatologists in terms of advances in some of our most difficult diseases…It’s extremely important that residents and medical students realize that there is a very dramatic need, not only for clinical pediatric rheumatologists, but people who will go into both laboratory, translational, and clinical research. They’re all interrelated these days.
