Workgroup
The ACR thanks the workgroup below for their dedication in planning, editing, and oversight of this initiative.
Authors
The ACR thanks the following physicians for authoring the content on this site.
Amani AlBijadi, MD
Izabela Antic, DO
John Bridges, MD
Ian Cooley, MD, MS
Joanne Szczygiel Cunha, MD
Nkechi Emejuaiwe, MD
Ibtissam Gad, MD
Lindsey Helget, MD
Tate Johnson, MD
Guy Katz, MD
Sian Yik Lim, MD
Brent Luedders, MD
Nadine Mbuyi, MD
Sreelakshmi Panginikkod, MD
Jose Rubio, MD
Cristina Saez, MD
Julie Schwartzman-Morris, MD
Huzaefah Syed, MD
Aikaterini Thanou, MD
Kimberly Trotter. MD
Samera Vaseer, MD
Heather Walters, MD
Nick Wiemer, DO
Editors
The ACR thanks the following physicians for editing the content on this site.
- Scott W. Canna, MD
- Haseeb Chaudhary, MD
- Dave Dimachkie, MD
- Anisha B. Dua, MD, MPH
- Miriah Gillispie-Taylor, MD
- Alfred Kim, MD, PhD
- Maleewan Kitcharoensakkul, MD, MSCI
- Fotios Koumpouras, MD
- Rebecca Manno, MD
- Natasha McKerran Ruth, MD
- Meredith Morcos, MD
- Kenneth S. O’Rourke, MD
- Michael H. Pillinger, MD
- Eric M. Ruderman, MD
- Anupama Shahane, MD, MPH
- Amanda Schnell, MD
- Didem Saygin, MD
- Rebecca Sadun, MD, PhD
- Philip Seo, MD
- Zachary Wallace, MD, MSC
- Lisa A. Zickuhr, MD
Amani AlBijadi, MD
Dr. Albijadi is a pediatric rheumatologist at King Fahad Medical City, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. She did her rheumatology training at The Hospital for Sick Children at University of Toronto. Her career interests are in patient education and awareness about pediatric rheumatology. Her research interest is in auto-inflammatory disease and inflammatory myositis.
Izabela Antic, DO
Dr. Antic is a second-year rheumatology fellow with USF Morsani-HCA Bayonet Point in Florida. She completed her internal medicine residency at University of Kentucky-Bowling Green. She is looking forward to sharing all she has learned in rheumatology fellowship with her future patients and colleagues.
Milap Bhatt, MD
Dr. Bhatt is a family medicine physician at Erie Family Health Center, an FQHC in Chicago, IL. He is also a core faculty member at Swedish Hospital in Chicago, where he teaches residents and medical students.
John Bridges, MD
Dr. Bridges is an assistant professor in adult and pediatric rheumatology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Children’s of Alabama. He completed his pediatrics residency at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in internal medicine and pediatrics and completed his fellowship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in adult and pediatric rheumatology. He is the founder of the Bridge to Adult Care from Childhood for Young Adults with Rheumatic Disease (BACC YARD) program and serves as the Lead Educator for his pediatric rheumatology division.
Ana Cary, MD
Dr. Cary is an Associate Professor of General Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital, where she sees pediatric patients in the outpatient general pediatrics clinic and also teaches residents and medical students.
Joanne Szczygiel Cunha, MD
Dr. Cunha is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School and the Program Director of the Rheumatology Fellowship at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She earned her Bachelor of Science at the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education at the City College of New York and received her medical degree from Albany Medical College. She completed her residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in rheumatology at Brown University.
Nkechi Emejuaiwe, MD
Dr. Emejuaiwe is a staff rheumatologist at the Cincinnati VA Medical Center and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Cincinnati. She has more than 15 years of experience as a clinician and has collaborated with the ACR and the American College of Physicians in the development of learning instruments. Her career focus is on the improvement of healthcare quality.
Heather Finlayson, MS, PA-C
Ms. Finlayson is a certified physician assistant for the Division of Rheumatology at National Jewish Health. Before joining National Jewish Health, Ms. Finlayson was a physician assistant with Colorado Arthritis Associates in Lakewood, Colorado. She is also affiliated with ViVO Infusion Center of Denver in Lakewood. She received her Bachelor of Science in Sports Medicine at Pepperdine University and her Masters of Science, Child Health Associate Physician Assistant Degree at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. Her clinical interests include ankylosing spondylitis, non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis, psoriatic arthritis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, gout, and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Ms. Finlayson is a member of the Association of Rheumatology Professionals (ARP; the interprofessional division of ACR) and the Association of Women in Rheumatology (AWIR). She is currently the AWIR Denver Local Chapter Lead and a Rheumatology Advanced Practice Providers (RhAPP) faculty member, and has served on several ACR/ARP committees.
Tate Johnson, MD
Dr. Johnson is an Assistant Professor and Early Career Investigator at the University of Nebraska Medical Center with a clinical focus on the management of patients with inflammatory arthritis. He is USSONAR certified and frequently incorporates the use of musculoskeletal ultrasound in patient care. He has participated in several national committees through the ACR, including the Fellows-in-Training Subcommittee and the Early Career Investigator Subcommittee, and was a question writer for the most recent CARE modules. He currently receives research support from the Rheumatology Research Foundation to investigate cardiovascular disease outcomes in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
Ibtissam Gad, MD
Dr. Gad is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan Division of Rheumatology with a focus on medical education, specifically curriculum development and model simulation. She completed her internal medicine training and a leadership in medical education program at the University Hospitals/Case Western, followed by her adult rheumatology fellowship at Henry Ford Health. She is currently the chair of the Fellows-in-Training Subcommittee at the ACR and has previously been involved with ACR via the V-FIT Working Group and Rheum2Learn 2.0 series. She also hosts her own creative rheumatology website entitled RheumDoodles.
Lindsay Helget, MD
Dr. Helget is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Rheumatology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Dr. Helget’s clinical focus is the treatment of gout, although she enjoys treating patients with all rheumatologic conditions. Her other interests include the utilization of musculoskeletal ultrasound to diagnose and treat rheumatic disease. She is also involved in medical student, resident, and fellow education.
Ginger Janow, MD
Dr. Janow is a pediatric rheumatologist at the Joseph M. Sanzari Children’s Hospital in Hackensack, New Jersey. She is the director for the fellowship program. She has a special interest in education, and teaches at the medical student, resident, and fellow level.
Guy Katz, MD
Dr. Katz is a rheumatologist in the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy, and Immunology at Massachusetts General Hospital. His interests include clinical and translational research in IgG4-related disease, systemic vasculitis, and medical education.
Brandon Ko, NP
In 2017, Dr. Ko left 8 years of practice in rural and urban pediatric primary care to join the Pediatric Rheumatology Department of the University of New Mexico (UNM). Since 2021, he has been the sole full-time pediatric rheumatology provider and attending at UNM, providing comprehensive inpatient and outpatient care for the entire state of New Mexico. He has collaborated with locums providers and has established a regional collaborative partnership with pediatric rheumatology colleagues at the Children’s Hospital of Colorado to provide state-of-the-art care to the families of New Mexico. Throughout this period, Dr. Ko continues to precept residents and NP and PA students in the field of pediatric rheumatology, fostering interest in an area that is in great need of future providers. He lectures regularly at the UNM College of Nursing and Medical School, as well as giving an annual lecture on pediatric rheumatology at his alma mater, the Yale School of Nursing. He is co-chair of the Rheumatology APP (RhAPP) Pediatric Committee and volunteers as the Medical Chair for the New Mexico Chapter of the Arthritis Foundation. Dr. Ko is dedicated to providing comprehensive state-of-the-art care to the families of New Mexico and increasing access to subspecialty care in underserved and rural communities.
Courtney Kremer, NP
Dr. Kremer is a pediatric nurse practitioner at the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital. She completed her schooling at the University of Iowa. She has worked in pediatric rheumatology since 2011 and has interests in JIA and JDM.
Sian Yik Lim, MD
Dr. Lim is a rheumatologist working at Hawaii Pacific Health and assistant clinical professor at University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine in Honolulu, HI. He completed his rheumatology fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. He has a special interest in osteoporosis and gout. He served as editor for the book titled “Pharmacological Interventions for Osteoporosis.” He is a Clinical Certified Densitometrist, certified by the International Society of Clinical Densitometry, and USSONAR certified in musculoskeletal ultrasound.
Brent Luedders, MD
Dr. Luedders is an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, where he also completed his rheumatology fellowship and internal medicine residency training. He is co-director of the multidisciplinary psoriasis/psoriatic arthritis clinic.
Nadine N. Mbuyi, MD
Dr. Mbuyi is a rheumatologist and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences. She also serves as program director of the rheumatology fellowship. Dr. Mbuyi completed her rheumatology fellowship at Brown University, where she received training on the diagnosis and management of a broad range of rheumatic diseases. Her clinical interests include lupus, crystalline arthropathies, and the management of rheumatic diseases in pregnancy. Dr. Mbuyi is board certified in internal medicine and rheumatology, and she is certified in musculoskeletal ultrasound by the ACR.
Sreelakshmi Panginikkod, MD
Dr. Panginikkod serves as the Associate Director of the Rheumatology Fellowship Program at Tufts Medical Center. She is board certified in internal medicine and rheumatology, and has received training in ultrasound imaging from USSONAR. Dr. Panginikkod represents the American College of Physicians (ACP) at the American College of Radiology review panel on musculoskeletal imaging. She is a reviewer of the rheumatology section of MKSAP, published by ACP.
Pankti Reid, MD
Dr. Pankti (“punk-tee”) Reid is faculty with an appointment in the Department of Medicine Division of Rheumatology as well as Committee on Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacogenomics at the University of Chicago Medical Center. During the pandemic, she served as the principal investigator for two investigator-initiated clinical trials that study the repurposing of a well-known rheumatology medication, tocilizumab, for COVID-19 pulmonary hyperinflammation. Most of her career, however, has been dedicated to studying judicious repurposing of rheumatology medications for therapy of immune-related adverse events (irAEs) or off-target toxicities of cancer immunotherapy. She has established a robust clinical infrastructure where she has created and leads the irAE Clinic and an interdisciplinary irAE Clinical Consortium. She is the institutional principal investigator for and serves on a national, multi-institutional consortium to better study rheumatic irAEs as well as an institutional PI for multiple clinical trials dedicated to optimizing irAE management. She has co-led the irAE didactics that are part of the SITC’s ConnectED program and has helped organize institutional quarterly irAE M&M meetings, which will be embedded into an anticipated irAE curriculum for medical trainees. Her work has been presented at multiple rheumatology and oncology national meetings, in multiple book chapters, as well as peer-reviewed publications in Journal of the American Medical Association and Journal of Immunotherapy for Cancer. She is grateful for the opportunity to work with so many exceptional sub-specialists within rheumatology and onco-immunology, which has grown to be such a collaborative medical arena.
Jose Rubio, MD
Dr. Rubio is an Assistant Professor and Associate Scientist at the Division of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He obtained his medical degree at the University of Guayaquil, Ecuador. He completed internal medicine training at MetroWest Medical Center, a Tufts University-affiliated hospital, where he also served as a chief resident. He then completed his fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. He is avidly interested in clinical-translational research encompassing the early stages of connective tissue diseases, mainly systemic lupus erythematosus. Currently, he is the lead faculty in the Lupus Center at UAB and is actively involved in various clinical and research endeavors.
Cristina Saez, MD
Dr. Saez is a second-year pediatric rheumatology fellow at the Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora, Colorado. She completed medical school at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and her general pediatrics residency at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. Her professional interests include medical education, cultural competency for underserved populations, and medical ethics.
Robert Spandorfer, MD
Dr. Spandorfer is a third-year clinical rheumatology fellow at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. He completed his medical degree and internal medicine residency at Emory University School of Medicine. His research focuses on cardiovascular disease in rheumatoid arthritis, and he has broad clinical interests, including rheumatoid arthritis, spondyloarthritis, lupus, and other connective tissue disease.
Hemalatha Srinivasalu, MD
Dr. Srinivasalu is the Program Director of the Pediatric Rheumatology Fellowship at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC, and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the GW School of Medicine. She is USSONAR certified in musculoskeletal ultrasound and certified in Master Teacher Leadership Development Program through the GW School of Medicine. She is a working group member for the ACR ViP learning series. Her research interests include juvenile spondyloarthritis, PFAPA, and Sjogren’s disease.
AIkaterini Thanou, MD
Dr. Thanou is a staff rheumatologist and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, where she teaches rheumatology to fellows, residents, and medical students.
Kimberly Trotter, MD
Dr. Trotter is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Section of Rheumatology at The University of Chicago. She completed her medical degree at The University of Maryland School of Medicine and her internal medicine residency and rheumatology fellowship at The University of Chicago. After fellowship, she continued her career at The University of Chicago as a clinical rheumatologist with a special focus in systemic lupus erythematosus. She serves as the co-director for The Lupus Clinic at The University of Chicago, where she follows a large cohort of lupus patients. In addition to her clinical duties, Dr. Trotter is also the Associate Program Director for The University of Chicago Rheumatology Fellowship program and is a mentor to students and trainees at all levels.
Samera Vaseer, MD
Dr. Vaseer is an associate professor and the director of the rheumatology fellowship program at the University of Oklahoma. She has a successful rheumatology practice in OU Health, while also serving veterans at Oklahoma City VA. She has a special interest in treating patients with connective tissue disease-related lung diseases, systemic sclerosis, vasculitis, and rheumatoid arthritis. She has helped establish a multidisciplinary Interstitial Lung Disease Program at OU and continues to be engaged in teaching future physicians and rheumatologists.
Heather Walters, MD
Dr. Walters is a pediatric rheumatologist in New Hyde Park, New York, and currently practices at Cohen Children’s Medical Center, Northwell Health. She completed her pediatrics residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital – New York Weill Cornell Center and her fellowship in pediatric rheumatology at the Hospital for Special Surgery. Dr. Walters is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, and is the Program Director for the Pediatric Rheumatology Fellowship at Cohen Children’s Medical Center.
Nick Wiemer, DO
Dr. Wiemer is an adult rheumatologist at Allegheny Health Network in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He completed is internal medicine residency and rheumatology fellowship at Allegheny Health Network. He is board certified in internal medicine and rheumatology.