“Our initiative this year has been to implement the agenda,” says Dr. St. Clair. “There are three areas, each defined by a subcommittee: funding opportunities, clinical research infrastructure, and awareness. Their efforts will lead to a number of action items that the committee will take before the ACR board of directors over the next year.” COR will develop action items from the efforts of those subcommittees.
“One of our first projects was a white paper developed by [Clifton Bingham III, MD, assistant professor of medicine in the rheumatology division at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore] and his subcommittee, on the appropriate training of clinical investigators,” says Dr. St. Clair. “This was brought to the board in early 2007.”
Promoting Research to Members
A major COR initiative is promoting basic and clinical research. “An important way the ACR promotes research is at the Annual Scientific Meeting,” says Dr. St. Clair. Specifically, COR is responsible for two pre-meetings offered at the Annual Scientific Meeting: a Basic Research Conference and a Clinical Research Conference.
“The topics and chairs for the Basic Research Conference and Clinical Research Conference are selected by COR,” explains Dr. St. Clair. “The topics are chosen because of their importance to the field of rheumatology and scientific interest. Leaders in the field are selected as chairs, who then organize the program and select the speakers.”
The Basic Research Conference has been enormously successful, adding considerably to the vitality of the basic science available at the Annual Scientific Meeting. “An important goal of the basic research conference is to provide a venue for established investigators to interact with young investigators, creating opportunities for mentoring and stimulating excitement about research among the trainees,” points out Dr. St. Clair. “Also, we invite leaders in the field who are presenting at the Basic Research Conference pre-meeting to speak at the annual meeting, further enriching the portfolio of basic science presentations available to our membership.”
The ACR Basic Research Conference is now a permanent fixture of the annual meeting. The focus of the 2007 conference is is “Musculoskeletal Engineering and Regeneration,” chaired by Rocky S. Tuan, PhD, from NIAMS and Rank Luyten, MD, PhD, from Katholieke Universitet in Belgium.
In comparison, the Clinical Research Conference is relatively new; the 2006 Scientific Meeting was its third year. It has also been very successful, largely due to the efforts of initial conference organizer Edward Yelin, PhD, professor of medicine in the rheumatology division at the University of California, San Francisco, says Dr. St. Clair.
