Overview
My clinical interests include systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and inflammatory myopathies. I also maintain a general rheumatology continuity clinic for individuals with rheumatoid arthritis, vasculitis, and other forms of inflammatory arthritis and autoimmune diseases. In 2007, I co-founded the Duke Lupus Clinic with Dr. Megan Clowse. We have continued this clinic with the aim to improve the health and quality of life for individuals living with lupus.
My primary research interests are in education and in SLE. My particular interest within education is learner assessment. I was previously funded by a Clinician Scholar Educator Award through the Rheumatology Research Foundation of the American College of Rheumatology. My CSE project explored validation of a rheumatology objective structured clinical examination (ROSCE). I continue to collaborate with the Rheumatology Program Directors at UNC Chapel Hill, Wake Forest University, the Medical University of South Carolina and Massachusetts General Hospital through our Carolinas Fellows Collaborative. Members of this group composed the competency-based goals and objectives (CBGO) for all learning activities of rheumatology fellowship training programs, which were adopted by the American College of Rheumatology and are posted on their website. I have been very involved in rheumatology curricular efforts through the American College of Rheumatology. I served on the Milestones working group and am a past member and past Chair of the ACR Curriculum Subcommittee of the Committee on Training and Workforce. I previously participated on the ACR/NBME rheumatology in-training examination working group.
Clinical research in lupus has included the Duke Lupus Registry population. Our recent work focuses on creating and defining the type 1 and type 2 lupus paradigms for classifying lupus disease activity. Additional interests through the Duke Lupus Clinic include elucidating clinician-level factors that can influence medication adherence as well as determining how health literacy and numeracy impact adherence and patient level outcomes. I collaborate with Dr. Megan Clowse, who studies reproductive health in women with autoimmune diseases. We have combined her subject matter expertise with my educational skills to create HOP-STEP, a program to teach patients with lupus and their rheumatologists about pregnancy planning to improve health outcomes. We have created lupuspregnancy.org, which houses many resources and videos designed to teach rheumatologists to better partner with women with lupus to have open and honest discussions about pregnancy planning. Our ultimate aim is to improve the health outcomes for women with lupus and their offspring.