The 2024 ARP President’s & Merit Awards

For decades, Dr. Bartlett has helped to train rheumatologists and health professionals on rheumatology teams to enhance patient-clinician communication. Dr. Bartlett has been at the forefront of improving quality of life for people with rheumatic diseases, as well as patient engagement and patient-centered outcomes research in rheumatology for many years. Her current research focuses on ensuring we capture outcomes that matter most to people with rheumatic diseases in arthritis research and care. She has led clinical trials to improve health behaviors in people with arthritis, including diet, exercise, smoking, weight, yoga and treatment adherence in the U.S. and Canada, and has authored more than 240 scientific articles.

Dr. Bartlett has served as principal investigator or co-investigator on studies funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Arthritis Society, the Arthritis Foundation and others. She sits on steering committees of the Canadian Early Arthritis Cohort (CATCH) and the Scleroderma Patient-centered Intervention Network (SPIN). She is co-founder of the McGill Health Measurement Centre, the Canada-PRO initiative, a former chair of the Patient Centered Outcomes Working Group for the American Thoracic Society, the Standards and Methods Committee of the International Society of Quality of Life (ISOQOL), and immediate past president of the NIH’s PROMIS (Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System) Health Organization. She previously co-chaired the Outcome Measures in Rheumatology (OMERACT) Rheumatoid Arthritis Flare Group and Drug Safety Group.

An active member of ARP since 1998, Dr. Bartlett was the first recipient of the Lawren Daltroy Fellowship in Patient-Clinician Communication. She joined the Rheumatology Research Foundation Board in November, and most recently served on the ARP Executive Committee (2021–23). She is currently an associate editor for The Rheumatologist magazine and served as editor of the ACR’s Clinical Care in the Rheumatic Diseases, 3rd edition.

“Throughout my career, I have passionately harnessed the power of behavioral science to improve communication, inspire positive health behaviors and ensure our research focuses on what matters most to people living with rheumatic diseases,” says Dr. Bartlett. “Although our treatments have seen remarkable advancements, the ARP Master Award serves as a powerful reminder: by addressing the psychosocial aspects of rheumatic diseases, we pave the way for better outcomes and enhanced quality of life for all our patients.”

Dr. Poole

ARP Lifetime Achievement Award

Among the ARP’s highest honors is the Lifetime Achievement Award, which is presented to a current or past member who has made meaningful and lasting contributions to the field of rheumatology. This year’s award recipient is Janet Poole, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA, professor emerita, former division chief and director of the occupational therapy graduate program in the department of pediatrics at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque.