The Section of Rheumatology is dedicated to providing the highest level of care to children with Rheumatic Diseases. The section’s goals are to:

Promote the highest quality interdisciplinary assessment and management practices to optimize child functioning and family support.

Serve as a resource to primary care practitioners for children with rheumatic diseases.

Enhance training and research so families will benefit from the best clinical and scientific advances with the highest standards of ethics, professionalism and advocacy.

Clinical Program

The section of Rheumatology provides care to children from a wide geographic region. Patients are seen at La Rabida Children’s Hospital, Comer Children’s Hospital, Hope Children’s Hospital, Shriner’s Children’s Hospital and at satellite offices in Merrillville, Indiana and Glenview, Illinois.  The service includes three board certified Pediatric Rheumatologists, a postdoctoral fellow, nurse practitioner and research coordinator.  Each year the rheumatology service sees greater than 2000 outpatient visits.  The section has expertise on a wide range of clinical syndromes and facility with all current therapeutic options including biologic therapies.  For more information about our clinical program, visit the Comer Hospital website.

Education

Fellowship Program

La Rabida Children’s Hospital/The University of Chicago maintains an ACGME accredited fellowship program in rheumatology. The goal of this 3-year fellowship program is to prepare post doctoral fellows in Rheumatology for teaching, patient care and research.

At the completion of training, each fellow will:

• Demonstrate a broad and in-depth understanding of childhood rheumatic diseases
• Demonstrate knowledge of basic science concepts important in the pathogenesis and treatment of childhood rheumatic diseases
• Exhibit a working knowledge of federal, state and local community resources available to support families and children with rheumatic diseases
• Demonstrate skills in the diagnosis and management of a wide range of rheumatic diseases
• Be experienced in participating in a wide variety of multidisciplinary teams
• Participate in meaningful research and become familiar with research methods used in rheumatology
• Complete a research project and present it at a scientific meeting and submit it to a peer reviewed journal for publication

By the third year, fellows are expected to present their research as abstracts, posters, platform presentations, and/or publications. They also attend grant writing seminars and are expected to either write their own grant proposal or to participate with mentors in grant writing. During the final year, DBP faculty actively assist fellows in finding the best possible academic position to meet their personal academic goals.

Training for Residents and Medical Students

The section also provides training rotations for residents and senior medical students. Rotations may either be based solely in rheumatology or provide a more comprehensive musculoskeletal medicine experience.

Research Program

Research is well-integrated in the section’s activities. Faculty research interests are as follows:

Drug therapy for difficult to treat Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis and Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Biomarkers to predict outcome for Chronic Inflammatory Diseases

Studies of Health Related Quality of Life and Outcomes measures for Childhood Onset SLE

Computerized teaching of musculoskeletal medicine for medical students and residents

Studies of Health Care disparity for children with rheumatic diseases.

The University of Chicago division of Rheumatology is the home to the electronic journal Pediatric Rheumatology (formerly Pediatric Rheumatology Online Journal) a refereed publication designed to meet the educational, reference, and communication needs of the international pediatric rheumatology community.