In 1916, a handful of conservation advocates successfully lobbied Congress to create the National Park Service, which now protects more than 85 million acres of U.S. land. Dedicated rheumatology advocacy has lasting effects, too, as evidenced by several policy wins in 2021 and efforts underway for 2022.
As chair of the Pediatric Rheumatology Special Committee, Colleen Correll, MD, MPH, is supporting efforts to increase the pediatric rheumatology workforce as a whole and pediatric rheumatology representation in the ACR.
With the ongoing COVID‑19 pandemic, several tools and strategies have been developed and implemented to reduce the spread of disease. These include social distancing, adequate ventilation, masks, monoclonal antibody treatment and vaccination.1 As of December 2021, 60% of all Americans have been fully vaccinated, and 8 in 10 adults in the U.S. have received at…
A larger proportion of patients with gout had a therapeutic response at six months when treated with methotrexate and pegloticase than with pegloticase alone, according to results from the multi-center, open-label MIRROR (methotrexate to increase response rates in patients with uncontrolled gout receiving KRYSTEXXA) study, recently published in the Journal of Rheumatology.1 The MIRROR study…
Joan Von Feldt, MD, Named a PANLAR Master On Aug. 12, 2021, the Pan American League of Associations for Rheumatology (PANLAR) named Joan Von Feldt, MD, MSEd, FACR, FACP, MACR, a PANLAR Master. Dr. Von Feldt, a past president of the ACR (2015–16) and an emeritus professor of medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine,…
Last year, in Texas, they had no room to breathe. Texas has 301 designated trauma centers equipped to provide intensive care, 200 of which can care for at least four critically ill patients. In August 2021, 75 of these hospitals reported having no available beds in their intensive care units. Zero. This was due, in…
The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) is a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that supports research into the causes, treatment and prevention of arthritis and musculoskeletal and skin diseases, as well as the training of basic and clinical scientists to carry out this research. NIAMS recognizes the…
States increasingly take the lead on issues critical to our members and the field of rheumatology, including copay accumulator bans, white bagging restrictions, prior authorization and drug pricing.
A 2021 MIPS Reporting Guide is available to help practices complete their MIPS dashboard and successfully report through the ACR’s RISE registry.
In January A&R, Simon et al. report a study to assess humoral and cellular immune responses after infection with, or vaccination against, SARS-CoV-2 in patients with B cell depletion and controls who are B cell competent, finding that B cell depletion completely blocks humoral but not T cell SARS-CoV-2 vaccination response. In the same issue, Connolly et al. evaluated disease flare and post-vaccination reactions in patients with rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases following messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccination.