I’m humbled to be in the company of so many investigators in the rheumatology field who work tirelessly to advance our knowledge. —Dr. Pascual
Paulding Phelps Award
Kara Petersen, MD, a rheumatologist with the Avera Medical Group Rheumatology, Sioux Falls, S.D., is the recipient of this year’s Paulding Phelps Award for outstanding service to patients, community and the practice of medicine.
As a clinical professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Sanford School of Medicine, Dr. Petersen works with medical students at various stages of training. She provides feedback to students in their first clinical weeks and enjoys mentoring fourth-year students who rotate through rheumatology.
“It’s very rewarding to see some of these students or residents pursue careers in rheumatology and return to South Dakota, since we have a shortage of rheumatologists in rural areas,” says Dr. Petersen, who also hosts two or three internal medicine residents yearly for a longitudinal rheumatology clinical experience.
Dr. Petersen currently serves on the Biologics Stewardship Committee for the Avera Health Plan and as secretary of the Board of Directors for the Rheumatology Association of Minnesota and the Dakotas.
“I love that rheumatology is never boring and requires lifelong learning, which keeps me both engaged and humble,” Dr. Petersen says. “I also enjoy the long-term relationships that come with helping patients and their families successfully manage chronic conditions over months, years and, maybe, decades together. It becomes more than just a workday or schedule to complete.”
Receiving this award reinvigorates my faith & my commitment to serving those around me. —Dr. Petersen
Henry Kunkel Early Career Investigator Award
The Henry Kunkel Early Career Investigator Award is given to a physician-scientist, age 45 or younger by Oct. 1 of the year in which they were nominated, who has made outstanding and promising contributions to basic or clinical research in the field of rheumatology. This year’s recipients are Ami Aalok Shah, MD, MHS, and Pamela Weiss, MD, MSCE.
Dr. Shah is an associate professor of medicine, deputy director of the Precision Medicine Center of Excellence for Rheumatology and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Scleroderma Center. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Dr. Shah completed her internal medicine residency at Stanford University Hospital and Clinics, Palo Alto, Calif., and her rheumatology post-doctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins. During her fellowship training, Dr. Shah also earned a master’s degree in health sciences in clinical investigations at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Dr. Shah’s primary research interest is in scleroderma.
“As in many of our rheumatic diseases, there is tremendous heterogeneity in the clinical phenotypes and kinetics of the disease,” Dr. Shah says. “Our group is working to address the complexity of the disease by defining more homogenous patient subgroups that may share disease mechanisms, risks of complications and response to different therapies—so that one day we can achieve the goal of precision medicine and individualized healthcare for our patients.”
Dr. Shah is also investigating the connection between cancer and scleroderma, and says early data suggests cancer may drive the development of scleroderma in some patients.
“By identifying subgroups of patients with a high cancer risk at scleroderma onset, we are able to study the role of cancer as a trigger of autoimmunity and also investigate whether these patient subgroups benefit from targeted cancer screening strategies,” Dr. Shah says.
Dr. Shah has served on ACR’s Early Career Investigator Subcommittee and the Rheumatology Research Foundation’s Core Portfolio Review Panel. She is also a Steering Committee member and Science Subcommittee Chair for the U.S. multi-center CONQUER scleroderma registry.
“I’m deeply honored to be a recipient of the Henry Kunkel Young Investigator Award,” Dr. Shah says. “It’s humbling given Henry Kunkel’s legacy, and I’m also honored to be in the company of so many previous recipients, who I look to as role models in rheumatology.”
Dr. Shah looks forward to continuing studying various aspects of scleroderma.
“I’m excited by new opportunities at Johns Hopkins to harness institutional big data and novel analytic strategies to further our goal of precision medicine in the rheumatic diseases,” she says. “An important component of this work is developing tools to bring scientific discoveries back into the clinic and I’m excited about the potential of this work to positively impact care for patients with rheumatic diseases.”
