Exclusive: ACR Convergence 2024| Focus Rheums

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

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Major Grant Funding for Collaborative RA Projects

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In the last three years, the ACR REF has raised more than $26 million toward the $30-million goal for the Within Our Reach: Finding a Cure for Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) campaign. Even in the worst economy this country has seen since the Great Depression, in fiscal year 2009, contributions to the Within Our Reach campaign exceeded $6.1 million. For the first quarter of fiscal year 2010, more than $1.1 million has already been received.

Bridge Funding Award Keeps Researcher on the Path to Her Passion

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On June 25, 2008, the American College of Rheumatology Research and Education Foundation received a letter from Sujata Sarkar, MD, one of the first recipients of the ACR REF/Arthritis Foundation Bridge Funding Award. In that letter Dr. Sarkar wrote, “I am very thankful to you … This award has come to me at a very crucial and vulnerable time in my academic career as a junior researcher.” The crucial and vulnerable time to which Dr. Sarkar refers is the time when she would need to search for alternative funding to pay for her rheumatology research career—or leave academia altogether.

REF and AF Partner to Provide an Additional “Bridge Funding”

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Fostering promising investigators is imperative to the future of rheumatology, so when the ACR Research and Education Foundation (REF) board of directors discovered that outstanding applicants were not being funded through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) K-series grant program (the NIH’s career development award program) due to budgetary constraints, the REF quickly called a meeting with the Arthritis Foundation (AF) and the NIH to discuss a solution.

Increase NIH Funding, Participate in Advocates for Arthritis

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The ACR consistently urges Congress to support issues relating to rheumatologists, rheumatology health professionals, and patients. The primary advocacy goals are: supporting of the “Arthritis Prevention, Control, and Cure Act of 2007” (H.R.1283/S.626) and the “Access to Medicare Imaging Act of 2007” (H.R.1293/S.1338), finding a permanent solution to the Medicare reimbursement issue, and increasing funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—including the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—and other agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Medical and Prosthetic Research Program.

2024 Election Summary, Outlook for the Lame Duck Session & the New Congress

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With a likely Republican majority in the House and Senate and a Republican president, there may be a sense that the party has a mandate to lead initiatives and enact significant policy changes. Any end-of-year legislative package will be narrower than initially expected, but the ACR’s top priority remains addressing cuts to physician reimbursements.

The ACR Joins Members of Congress in Call for Medicare Reimbursement Reform

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A letter from 233 bipartisan members of Congress last week urged House leadership to replace the 2.8% cut proposed in the FY2025 Physician Fee Schedule with an annual payment update reflective of inflationary pressures before the end of the year. Boost this effort by contacting your legislator today.