Clinical Reflections®: Achieving Success in RA Assessment and Management: A Learner Pathway to Improve Patient Outcomes

 

Dr Jeffrey Curtis is a professor of medicine in the division of clinical immunology and rheumatology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr Curtis received a medical degree and a Master of Public Health degree from Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Oregon. He subsequently completed a residency in internal medicine at Oregon Health & Science University and a fellowship in rheumatology at UAB. He completed a graduate program in clinical informatics at Stanford University and received his Master of Science degree in epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is board certified in both rheumatology and clinical informatics.

 

Dr Curtis currently holds the William J. Koopman Endowed Professorship in Rheumatology and Immunology at UAB. He is the co-director of the UAB Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics (CERTs) of Musculoskeletal Disorders, which has a major emphasis on evaluating the safety and comparative effectiveness of medications for rheumatic diseases. Additionally, as the director of the UAB Arthritis Clinical Intervention Program, he leads the clinical trials unit for the rheumatology division at UAB, with a particular focus on rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis. Dr Curtis is the co-director of the UAB Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics Research (PEER) Unit. PEER uses multiple large data sources to study comparative effectiveness questions across multiple chronic diseases. These data sources include national administrative data from Medicare and commercial health plans, electronic health record data, and large registries. In 2012, Dr Curtis was awarded the Henry Kunkel Young Investigator Award by the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) and was accepted into the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) in 2016.

 

The evaluation of the efficacy, comparative effectiveness, and safety of the medications used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and spondyloarthritis are among Dr Curtis’s research interests. He served on the Core Expert Panel for the ACR’s 2008, 2012, and 2015 Recommendations for the Use of Non-Biologic and Biologic Disease Modifying Antirheumatic Drugs in RA. He was the deputy director for a collaborative project between the FDA, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and a number of academic centers studying the safety of biologic agents using multiple, pooled national data sources. He is the co-principal investigator (PI) of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)-funded Patient Powered Research Network “Arthritis-Power” registry, which is focused on RA, psoriasis, and psoriatic arthritis. He also leads the multicenter National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded large, pragmatic, randomized, controlled trial “VERVE,” studying the safety and effectiveness of the live herpes zoster vaccine in patients receiving biologic agents. Dr Curtis is a member of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) Herpes Zoster workgroup. In 2015, he was appointed as a member to the FDA Arthritis Advisory Committee. Dr Curtis also studies risk factors for and outcomes of osteoporosis. He was a member of the ACR’s task force to update recommendations for the management of glucocorticoid induced osteoporosis. He served on the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR) Task Force on Atypical Subtrochanteric and Diaphyseal Fractures.

 

Dr Curtis is a member of the American College of Rheumatology, the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology, the American Medical Informatics Association, and the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research. He has been on the editorial board for Arthritis & Rheumatism, Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, and Arthritis Care and Research. He has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts, review articles, and book chapters.

 

Martin Jan Bergman, MD, FACR, FACP, FCPP, is clinical associate professor of medicine at the Drexel University School of Medicine in Philadelphia. He is also a full-time clinical rheumatologist in a private practice setting, with nearly 30 years of clinical experience.

 

In addition to issues affecting the running of a successful clinical practice, Dr Bergman is interested in issues facing practicing rheumatologists on a daily basis. With collaborators, Dr Bergman has played a pivotal role in the development of patient management tools, particularly the Routine Assessment of Patient Index Data 3 (RAPID3). This disease measurement tool is now an outcomes measure accepted by the American College of Rheumatology and used worldwide.

 

Dr Bergman is a recognized leader in the field of clinical and patient reported outcomes, and has spoken both nationally and internationally on this and other topics. For his work, he has received the Joseph L. Hollander Award for Excellence and Achievement in Rheumatology by the Southeast Pennsylvania Arthritis Foundation and has been elected as a fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

 

Peter C. Taylor, MA, BM, BCh, PhD, FRCP, FRCPE, holds the Norman Collison Chair of Musculoskeletal Sciences at the University of Oxford and is a fellow of St. Peter’s College, Oxford. He is the director of clinical sciences and the biomedical research unit inflammation theme at the Botnar Research Centre and leads the rheumatology clinical trials group within the Nuffield Department of Orthopedics, Rheumatology, and Musculoskeletal Sciences. He was formerly professor of experimental rheumatology at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology Division, Imperial College London, and the dean of the Charing Cross campus.

 

Dr Taylor studied pre-clinical medical sciences at Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge and his first degree was in Physiology. He subsequently studied clinical medicine at the University of Oxford and was awarded a PhD degree from the University of London for studies on pathogenesis of arthritis. In the summer of 2015 he was appointed medical director of the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society, an outstanding patient led charity that works tirelessly to support patients with rheumatoid arthritis and juvenile inflammatory arthritis. Professor Taylor chairs the UK government and NIHR Translational Research Partnership in rheumatology that brings together the UK's leading academic and clinical centers for experimental medicine and translational research into a ready-formed partnership of Universities and NHS hospitals. He was nominated as a distinguished member of the British Society for rheumatology in 2016.

 

Dr Taylor has specialist clinical interests in inflammatory arthritis. He has over 20 years’ experience in clinical trial design and international leadership in studies of biologic and small molecular therapies in rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis, including the earliest seminal trials of anti-TNF and anti-IL-6 receptor therapy. His research expertise is in mechanisms sustaining inflammation and clinical trials of new therapies with development of novel outcome measurements for application in assessment of response to therapy including ultrasonographic and high field magnetic resonance imaging technology. In experimental medicine studies, Dr Taylor employs targeted therapies as probes of pathogenesis to investigate the in vivo biology of the target in the pathobiology of the disease phenotype under investigation. His interest in novel outcome measures also includes new tools for the personalized assessment of wellbeing which can be used adjunctively to clinical outcome measures in informing management decisions.