The ACR/ARHP Honors ARHP Members for Contributions to Rheumatology

Q: What about your focus on targeting resilience factors appeals to you?

A: People are inherently resilient. Despite bad circumstances, disease, disability and loss, many people fight, survive and thrive. This is a remarkable fact and worthy of study. Psychology has spent far too much time focusing on what is wrong with people. It seems advisable to focus on what is right instead—learn about these processes and teach related skills to enhance resilience. Moreover, living the good life—having a high quality of life—should not be reserved for only healthy individuals. My research is centered on fostering strengths and increasing happiness in people with rheumatic illness despite the pain.

Q: As a psychologist, it must be fascinating tying the role of psychological and affective factors in chronic pain conditions. What made you want to tie the two together?

A: Neuro-imaging studies may offer the best evidence of why tying the two together is important. Pain processing and emotional processing share many of the same brain structures and neurochemistry. The two are tightly bound. If we can enhance positive emotions, not only might we make a patient’s life more rewarding, but we might even make the pain better.

ARHP Addie Thomas Service Award

Linda Ehrlich-Jones, PhD, RN

Clinical research scientist, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago

Background: Arthritis wasn’t always going to be the focus of Dr. Ehrlich-Jones’s career. In fact, she wanted to delve into orthopedics when she went for her Master of Science degree in medical surgical nursing at Loyola University of Chicago.

“They didn’t have a mentor for me,” she says. “But they said, ‘Oh, we have this person who does rheumatology.’ And I said, ‘Sure, no problem.’ I actually found I liked it much better. Rheumatology is very much like detective work. There are so many different diseases, and they’re very similar. You have to figure out what’s going on.”

Dr. Ehrlich-Jones has been on the case a while. She earned that master’s from Loyola in 1987 and completed her doctoral studies in nursing sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2001. She has been at the Rehabilitation Institute since 2004.

Her work with the ARHP dates back to 1987 and she has held several positions with the organization, including as president in 2009–10. She has also been involved with the Arthritis Foundation since 1987. Her current work focuses on changing behavior in people with rheumatic diseases to encourage more physical activity.