Exclusive: ACR Convergence 2024| Focus Rheums

An official publication of the ACR and the ARP serving rheumatologists and rheumatology professionals

Carina Stanton

Carina Stanton, BSJ, MA, is a freelance science journalist based in Denver. She has been writing about science for more than 16 years, covering a range of healthcare topics, including rheumatology, surgery, nursing and executive leadership. Her work has appeared in newspapers, newsletters, trade and consumer magazines, books and peer-reviewed journals. Carina has also covered a range of other science news topics, including environmental science, marine biology and archaeology. She has conducted her own research in historical archaeology in Great Britain and Scotland and worked on dig sites in Northern Ireland and Wales. As a former mass media science and engineering fellow for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Carina is inspired to advance the public understanding of science. When she is not working indoors, Carina is happy spending time outside with her husband and two young children to hike, mountain bike and help her children grow their passion for nature.

Articles by Carina Stanton

Joining Forces to Advance Pediatric Rheumatology Care

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Pediatric rheumatologists are in high demand. In fact, a shortage of pediatric rheumatologists requires more than half of all U.S. children with rheumatic diseases seek care with adult rheumatologists, and this shortage is projected to increase. For the past decade, the ACR’s Special Committee on Pediatric Rheumatology has worked to change this by bringing together…

Bringing a Frontline Perspective to Insurance Advocacy

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Early in his career as a resident at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., Christopher Phillips, MD, felt a connection to his patients battling rheumatic diseases. Today, Dr. Phillips balances time with his solo private practice in Paducah, Ky., to help rheumatologists fight insurance battles for their patients in his role as chair of the…

Large Vessel Vasculitis Outcome Measures: An Update from OMERACT

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In ongoing work to validate data-driven outcome tools for clinical investigation in large vessel vasculitis, an international team of rheumatologists from the Outcome Measures in Rheumatology (OMERACT) Vasculitis Working Group has published a report on subclinical disease activity and patient perspectives on therapy response…

Practices Now Contributing to RheumPAC

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Last year the ACR’s nonpartisan political action committee, RheumPAC, raised nearly $150,000 from individual contributors. Starting in 2019, the addition of the RheumPAC Advocacy Fund, where rheumatology practices and state societies can contribute corporate dollars, is expected to support RheumPAC fundraising efforts in an effort to surpass this dollar amount, giving rheumatology an even stronger…

History of Depression Is a Risk Factor for SLE in Women

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Results from a 20-year, cohort study add to the evidence that depression increases the risk of developing an autoimmune disease, specifically SLE in women. Lead investigator Andrea Roberts, PhD, says, “There may be direct biological effects of depression that increase the risk of autoimmune disease.”…

The Effects of Early RA Treatment on CVD

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New research exploring the effects of etanercept on cardiovascular disease in treatment-naive, early RA patients suggests a treatment advantage with etanercept, a TNF inhibitor and methotrexate over treatment with methotrexate and a conventional synthetic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug…

Leadership Support for Division Directors

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The ACR has elected a small group of division directors from across the country to serve on the Division Directors Special Committee. The goals of this committee: to better understand the needs of academic rheumatology programs and share with these programs new resources from the ACR and other organizations to support the needs of those…