Pediatric Rheumatology

Ways to Give Back

Dear Friends,

We enjoy seeing your children in our program and share in their struggles and successes. At the end of almost every visit I am asked what is new, and what has been discovered about their child’s disease. I am sorry to say that although there have been advances in the past year we have not developed a cure for any autoimmune or auto inflammatory disorder. Some new treatments have been developed for Pediatric Rheumatic diseases but they are not effective for all children and there are often remaining concerns about long term safety.

For the past 40 years our program has been committed to develop and investigate treatments that decrease long term side effects. One example would be a study we published this year which demonstrates that certain patients with Dermatomyositis can be treated without steroid therapy and steroid side effects:
Favorable Outcome of Juvenile Dermatomyositis Treated without Systemic Corticosteroids.
Levy DM, Bingham CA, Kahn PJ, Eichenfield AH, Imundo LF.
J Pediatr. 2009 Oct 19.

In order to make progress in treating children with Rheumatic Diseases it is vital that we collect information on our current experience with available treatments and improve upon benchmarked standards. Just as we demonstrated with the paper above we are committed to learn from every patient and every family. In addition we our committed to our educational program to train the next generation of academic Pediatric Rheumatology Specialists. Columbia University’s rigorous three year fellowship program involves our entire faculty. More than 300,000 children have an autoimmune disease and currently there are less than 200 practicing pediatric rheumatologists in the United States. Many children do not receive adequate care. Our program provides the optimal environment to train additional fellows and start them on a productive career path.

All of these efforts require resources and unfortunately the current economic crisis and the changes to health care funding are making it harder than ever for us accomplish our mission. We are asking your family to join with us and support these important initiatives in research and education. Together we can work towards curing these chronic autoimmune diseases.

To make a donation contact...
Lisa Imundo MD. FAAP, FACR
Director of Pediatric Rheumatology
Director of the Pediatric Rheumatology Fellowship Program
Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of New York-Presbyterian, Columbia University Medical Center
3959 Broadway
New York, NY 10032