The 2025 ACR Awards of Distinction

As the medical director at Oregon Health & Science University, Dr. Deodhar transformed a monodirectional rheumatology clinic into nine super-specialty multidisciplinary clinics, including the rheumatology-dermatology combined clinic for psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, an axial spondyloarthritis clinic, a rheumatology-dermatology combined lupus clinic, a scleroderma clinic, a vasculitis clinic, a rheumatology-neurology myositis clinic, a rheumatology-pulmonary interstitial lung disease/sarcoidosis clinic, a fibromyalgia clinic and an ultrasound-guided joint injection clinic.

In collaboration with the Indian Health Service, he established a quarterly clinic at Warm Springs Indian Reservation, Oregon, which he has run for 20 years. Dr. Deodhar is the editor in chief of Best Practice & Research: Clinical Rheumatology. His research focuses on clinical trials of novel agents in the treatment of axial spondyloarthritis, psoriatic arthritis and RA, as well as the epidemiology of inflammatory rheumatic diseases. He has authored three books, more than 400 peer-reviewed articles, editorials and several book chapters for Harrison’s Textbook of Medicine and others. He has been a principal investigator for more than 100 clinical trials.

Dr. Deodhar has served the ACR on various committees, including the Annual Meeting Planning Committee, for which he served as vice chair for two years, the Treatment Guidelines Subcommittee and the Peripheral MRI Task Force, and as the associate editor of the ARP’s Advanced Rheumatology Course. He served on the rheumatology board of the American Board of Internal Medicine. He is a past chair of the Spondyloarthritis Research and Treatment Network (SPARTAN) and has served on the steering committee of the Group for Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis (GRAPPA), the medical and scientific advisory board of Spondylitis Association of America and the Arthritis Foundation Great West Region.

“It is a profound honor—and a true career highlight—to receive the Distinguished Clinician Scholar Award from the American College of Rheumatology,” says Dr. Deodhar. “Rheumatology has afforded me the unique privilege of making a meaningful difference in the lives of patients, not only through clinical care but also by contributing to research that advances our field. Practicing medicine across three countries and continents, I have been fortunate to learn from exceptional mentors, dedicated trainees and the patients who have entrusted me with their care.”

Distinguished Fellowship Program Director Award

The Distinguished Fellowship Program Director Award is given to a current or former rheumatology program director who has made outstanding contributions in the mentoring and training of future rheumatologists; this year’s recipient is Kenneth S. O’Rourke, MD, MACR, who just retired from private practice in Portland, Maine, and as chief of the Division of Rheumatology at Maine Medical Center, Portland. Prior to that he was professor of medicine and served as the rheumatology program director for 22 years at Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, N.C.