The 2023 ARP President’s Awards

Dr. Richardson has also served as the president of the ARP and on the executive committee of the ACR. Additionally, she initiated the physical therapy component of the Global Health Outreach Initiative at Duke University, traveling to India and Kuwait in the process. She served as a volunteer with a healthcare system in western Pennsylvania and with the Western Pennsylvania Hospital Council.

Dr. Richardson has received numerous awards and honors throughout her career, including the Catherine Worthingham Fellow Award (APTA), the Lucy Blair Service Award (APTA), and the Stanley Paris Award (AOPTA/APTA) and was selected nationally as an Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Fellow.

With her co-investigator, Chad Cook, Dr. Richardson pioneered early work in the establishment of valid and reliable scales for pain and disability. Further areas of research included validation of an item bank in community-dwelling survivors of stroke, looking into the meta-analyses of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) treatments supported by biomedical oncology, and investigation into the use of physical therapy in patients hospitalized with a diagnosis of generalized weakness.

Bharati Bhardwaja, PharmD, BCPS, LSSBB, is a clinical pharmacy specialist in rheumatology at Kaiser Permanente Colorado, Denver, and a clinical assistant professor at the University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Aurora. She served on the ARP Governance Task Force.

“I am truly honored and grateful to be recognized in this capacity by the ARP,” says Dr. Bhardwaja. “I continue to feel encouraged and motivated to support and contribute toward ARP’s mission.”

Dr. Bhardwaja attended the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, and completed three years in the Biomedical Sciences program before transferring to the State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY at Buffalo) School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences to complete her Doctor of Pharmacy degree. She then completed a Nephrology/Renal Transplantation American Society Health Systems Pharmacists Accredited Specialty Residency Post Graduate Program at SUNY at Buffalo School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

After completing her residency, Dr. Bhardwaja moved to Denver in 2002 and joined Kaiser Permanente Colorado as its first clinical pharmacy specialist in nephrology/renal transplantation. After eight years, she decided to venture into pharmacy administration and took on the role of pharmacist/pharmacy analyst with the Pharmacy Strategy and Optimization team, where she earned her Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma. After spending five years in this role, she transitioned back into patient care as a clinical pharmacist in rheumatology. Twenty-one years later, she is still going strong at Kaiser Permanente Colorado.