The 2023 ARP President’s Awards

Daniel Schaffer, PA-C, MPAS, is a senior physician assistant in the Division of Rheumatology at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. His concurrent military career with the U.S. Army Reserve spanned 27 years. He entered the Reserve as a private first class and retired as a major.

Mr. Schaffer completed his physician assistant (PA) training in 1994 at Cook County Hospital/Malcolm X College in Chicago and completed his master’s degree in family medicine fellowship at the University of Nebraska Medical School, Omaha, in 2000. After completing his PA training, he practiced primary care with the Unity Physicians Group and the Goshen Health System in Indiana before joining the Mayo Clinic in 2001.

His military medical training and the specialized rheumatology training he received at Mayo Clinic proved to be invaluable when he was deployed in 2004–05 to the Middle East in support of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Noble Eagle. He cared for coalition soldiers and civilians of host nations with primary care and rheumatology conditions.

Mr. Schaffer has been a member of the ARP since 2001 and has been very active in multiple task forces, including the ARP Governance Task Force and those that developed the Advanced Rheumatology Provider course, the Rheumatology Nursing course and the Nurse Practitioner/Physician Assistant Fellowship program. He served as the ARHP representative to the ACR Blue Ribbon Task Force on Academic Rheumatology and chaired the ARP Practice Committee.

“It is always a special honor to be acknowledged by your peers, and this particular award carries a very special meaning for me in that it acknowledges not only the achievements of this task force, but also the spirit of all who are part of the ACR and ARP, past, present and future,” says Mr. Schaffer. “This professional organization has been a pioneer and advocate for rheumatology patients and their families from its inception and will continue to move forward until these diseases—and the suffering they bring—are extinct.”

Patrice Fusillo is a writer and editor based in Oakland, Calif.