| Division of Rheumatology Newsletter |
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Dear Colleagues and Friends,
In these times of great uncertainties and mounting challenges, I am reminded of and grateful for the resilience and dedication of our faculty, staff and trainees. Our faculty continues to be recognized for their impact locally and nationally. We continue to attract high-quality faculty and trainees to WashU. Our wildly innovative educators are continually introducing new teaching strategies and methods to improve our fellowship. Our research enterprise is going strong. We look forward to a bright future in the days ahead.
As always, we thank you for your friendship and support.
Best wishes,
Christine Pham, MD
Guy and Ella Mae Magness Professor of Medicine
Chief, Division of Rheumatology
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We officially welcome Drs. Sambhawana “Sam” Bhandari and Akhil Sood to the Division of Rheumatology!
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Dr. Bhandari completed her Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery at Kathmandu University of Medical Sciences, Nepal 2017 and medicine residency at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. She came to WashU for her rheumatology fellowship where she performed exemplarily, earning her the 2024 Benjamin D. Schwartz MD, PhD Distinguished Fellow Award in Rheumatology. One of Dr. Bhandari’s interests is to take care of the increasingly growing number of patients suffering from rheumatic adverse events following treatment of their cancer with immune checkpoint inhibitors.
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Dr. Sood completed his MD at McGovern Medical School at UT Health, Houston and medicine residency at University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston followed by fellowship in Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University, Palo Alto. He holds a Master’s degree in Science, Epidemiology and Clinical Research. Dr. Sood received several awards during his training, including the 2021 RRF Medical Resident Research Award, the 2024 UCB Women’s Health Fellowship in Rheumatology (in support of a rheumatology fellow with a specialized focus on women’s health-related issues), and the 2024 Hal Holman Research Fellowship Award (in honor of Dr. Halsted Holman, a foundational rheumatology researcher and former chair of medicine at Stanford). Dr. Sood’s interest is in reproductive health in lupus patients.
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Dr. Basma Shahid, Dr. Gavin Hall, Dr. Hirva Joshi and Dr. Sarah Naids will be starting with us on July 1, 2025. We are looking forward to having them with us and are so excited for next year!
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Jessica Williams, MD, MPH has been accepted as a Dissemination & Implementation Academy Fellow. The Washington University Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS) is launching a new program, WashU Implementation Science Academy (WISA), designed to nurture emerging national leaders in implementation science, enhance Washington University’s leadership in applied implementation research, and bolster institutional capacity for translational science in the School of Medicine.
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Seth Eisen, MD 2025 Dean's Impact Award Recipient. The 2025 Dean’s Impact Awards recognize faculty who have demonstrated an enduring commitment and achievement in community engagement.
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Michael Paley, MD has been selected for ASCI's 2025 Young Physician Scientist Award. Congratulations to Dr. Michael Paley for being selected for the highly selective ASCI’s 2025 Young Physician-Scientist Award (YPSAs). Dr. Paley is one of 50 awardees chosen out of 188 nominations. The award recognizes physician-scientists who are early in their first faculty appointment and who have made notable achievements in their research.
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Midwest Mountain Rheumatology Collective
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WashU Medicine is expanding its partnerships with surrounding Rheumatology Fellowship Training Programs. Programs from Northwestern University, University of Alabama – Birmingham, University of Colorado, and WashU Medicine have formed the Midwest Mountain Rheumatology Collective. To kick off our collaboration, we hosted a virtual Rheumatology Objective Structured Clinical Examination (ROSCE) in February 2025, where fellows participated in stations and received feedback, tips, and tricks from faculty to enhance their clinical skills. This year’s stations highlighted interpreting musculoskeletal radiology, using generative AI to write medical letters, managing infusion reactions, and approaching a case of hypereosinophilia with features of vasculitis. The day concluded with a presentation by Anna Helena Jonsson, who shared her research characterizing rheumatoid arthritis with histopathology. We are looking forward to future Midwest Mountain Rheumatology Collective events!
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The WashU Divisions of Infectious Diseases, Nephrology, and Rheumatology create quarterly "Meeting Our Community" experiences. The purpose of these events is to expand fellows, faculty, and staff's understanding of the impact of social and structural determinants on health care and identify opportunities to work with community partners to optimize patient care. We visited St. Patrick Center in October 2024 and Casa de Salud in March 2025, where we learned about resources for people who are unhoused or from immigrant backgrounds. We appreciate the important work of St. Louis's community organizations and look forward to collaborating with them in patient care.
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The Division of Rheumatology is home for the Washington University Rheumatic Diseases Research Resource-based Center (WU-RDRRC), a P30 program funded by NIAMS. The WU-RDRRC builds on the strength of the Washington University in St. Louis basic and translational science research community and leverages state-of-the-art technologies to bring together investigators in a “team science approach” to perform high-quality research that promotes and enables cutting-edge collaborative science and advance the pace of discovery.
On February 27, 2025 the WU-RDRRC organized a mini symposium that brought together rheumatic disease researchers from across the campus and provided an opportunity to share new research findings, facilitate scientific exchange, and identify new collaborations, and promote our associated research core facilities. The half-day symposium featured:
A keynote address by Dr. Mary Nakamura, Professor of Medicine and Director of PREMIER, Precision Medicine in Rheumatology P30 Center, at University of California at San Francisco.
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Talks from past and current Pilot/Feasibility award recipients
Erica Schmitt, MD PhD, Assistant Professor, Pediatric Rheumatology
Tarin Bigley MD PhD, Assistant Professor, Pediatric Rheumatology
Michael Paley, MD PhD, Assistant Professor, Rheumatology
Iris Lee, MD, Instructor, Rheumatology
Four oral abstracts: Amanda Cimino (Department of Orthopedics), Elizabeth Schmitz (MSTP-Immunology), Isabel Ritsch (MSTP-Computational and Systems Biology), and Josh Tobin (MSPT-Immunology)
22 poster entries
The symposium was highly successful, attracting ~80 attendees from across several departments.
Check out the RDRRC and the Division of Rheumatology research output here.
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Mailing Address: 660 S. Euclid Ave. MSC: 8045-0043-15
St. Louis, MO 63110
Phone: 314-286-2635 | Fax: 314-286-2338
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660 S. Euclid Ave MSC-8045-0043-15 | SAINT LOUIS, MO 63110 US
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