Professor Robert B.M Landewé, MD
Rheumatologist and professor
Professor Désirée van der Heijde
Professor of Rheumatology Leiden University Medical Center Leiden, The Netherlands
Jeffrey A. Sparks, MD, MMSc
Rheumatologist and Associate Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts
Dr. Stephanie Tom
Community Rheumatologist in Mississauga, ON and current CRA Vice-President
Tom Appleton
Chief of Rheumatology at St. Joseph’s Health Care, London, Ontario
Professor Robert B.M Landewé, MD
Rheumatologist and professor
Amsterdam University Medical Center & Zuyderland Medical Center, Heerlen, The Netherlands
Robert Landewé is a professor of rheumatology at the Academic Medical Center / University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and is a chair of the department of rheumatology at Zuyderland Medical Center Heerlen, The Netherlands.
Professor Landewé received his medical degree from Maastricht University in 1990 and obtained his PhD in Leiden in 1994.
He received practical training in general internal medicine and rheumatology at Atrium Medical Center, Heerlen and in rheumatology at the University Hospital, Maastricht. He practices rheumatology in the Zuyderland Medical Center in Heerlen/Sittard, The Netherlands
Professor Landewé is involved in outcome research and epidemiological research in the field of rheumatoid arthritis, spondyloarthritis and other rheumatic & musculoskeletal manifestations. He has extensive experience in the design and analysis of clinical trials and has a special interest in medical statistics. Professor Landewé has authored or co-authored more than 700 articles (H-factor: 110) and many book chapters covering a variety of topics, but with an emphasis on clinical epidemiology, methodology, statistics and guideline development (‘meta-research’). Recently he has developed an interest in -and published about- worldwide equity-issues pertaining to rheumatic diseases, as well as overdiagnosis and overtreatment of rheumatic diseases.
He has led many EULAR recommendation initiatives and updates thereof on the management of systemic sclerosis, early arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, axial spondyloarthritis, and on the management of SARS-CoV-2 in patients with inflammatory rheumatic diseases.
He is a regular reviewer for several general medicine-, rheumatology- and epidemiology journals.
Professor Landewé is a previous executive committee member of OMERACT, is board member and past-president of the Assessment in Spondyloarthritis International Society (ASAS), previous executive board member of the Dutch Society of Rheumatology (responsible for quality of care issues), executive board member of the METEOR foundation (monitoring in rheumatology) and Council member and past-chair of the Quality of Care committee of EULAR.
Professor Désirée van der Heijde
Professor of Rheumatology Leiden University Medical Center Leiden, The Netherlands
Désirée van der Heijde obtained her medical degree in 1986 from the Catholic University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. She completed her PhD in 1991 and became a Board-Certified Rheumatologist in 1993. Following a 1-year appointment in Sweden in 1993, she joined the Department of Rheumatology at the University Hospital Maastricht until 2007, when she took up her current position as Professor of Rheumatology at the Leiden University Medical Center. Since 2007, she has also been affiliated to the Diakonhjemmet Hospital in Oslo, Norway. She is visiting professor at the University of Oslo.
Her major research interest is in the methodology of outcomes assessment and its application in clinical research. Specific areas of interest are radiographic scoring methods in rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and spondyloarthritis, as well as scoring of magnetic resonance imaging in spondyloarthritis.
Professor van der Heijde was the Chairperson of the Assessment of SpondyloArthritis international Society (ASAS) from 1995 to 2012. She was the Chair of the EULAR Standing Committee for Clinical Affairs and the ACR-EULAR liaison officer between 2011 and 2019. She received the prestigious Carol Nachman Award for her scientific contributions to rheumatology in 2011, a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Ghent in Belgium in 2012, and the Jan van Breemen medal in 2017. She is an honorary member of EULAR. Professor van der Heijde has published more than 1000 papers in the international literature, as well as chapters in leading rheumatology textbooks. She is editor of Hochberg’s Rheumatology textbook, associate editor of the Annals of Rheumatic Diseases, member of the editorial board of RMD Open and the Journal of Rheumatology.
Jeffrey A. Sparks, MD, MMSc
Rheumatologist and Associate Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts
Jeffrey A. Sparks, MD, MMSc, is a rheumatologist and Associate Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.
His research focuses on using patient-oriented and epidemiologic methods to evaluate the etiology, outcomes, and public health burden of rheumatic diseases. His research themes are rheumatoid arthritis risk and outcomes related to pulmonary disease, COVID-19 and rheumatic diseases, and rheumatic immune-related adverse events from immunotherapy for cancer treatment.
Dr. Sparks serves as the Director of Immuno-Oncology and Autoimmunity and Associate Program Director for the Rheumatology Fellowship of the Division of Rheumatology, Inflammation, and Immunity. He has received research awards from the National Institutes of Health, American College of Rheumatology, European Alliance of Rheumatology Associations, Rheumatology Research Foundation, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Brigham Research Institute, and Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Stephanie Tom
Community Rheumatologist in Mississauga, ON and current CRA Vice-President
Dr. Stephanie Tom is a community rheumatologist in Mississauga, ON and current CRA Vice-President. She is the rheumatology division head at Trillium Health Partners since 2019 and has been a member of the CRA Board of Directors since 2018. She created the ORA planetary health initiative in 2022 and is the chair of the 2024 CRA planetary health taskforce.
