The University of Pittsburgh, founded in 1787, is a major institution of higher education serving citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the nation. The University currently enrolls approximately 35,000 students in its 16 schools at one main and 4 regional campuses. During the past decade the University has undergone tremendous growth and has attracted faculty and students of the highest caliber as evidenced by its rapid rise in extramural research funding. It now ranks 10th in funding from the National Institutes of Health. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) encompasses four teaching hospitals and plays a dominant role in an expanding network of health care in the southwestern Pennsylvania region.

The Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology Fellowship Training Program at the University of Pittsburgh has a long tradition of academic excellence, both in the areas of clinical and basic biomedical research. Many of the fellows trained in our program have assumed leadership roles in academics, industry, and community practice. A listing of the fellows who were trained in our Program and their current locations and positions is presented in the Postdoctoral Fellowship Roster.

The goal of our fellowship training program is to continue to train the leaders of rheumatology in academic medicine, industry and community practice. Our training program is specifically designed to accomplish this goal. The program includes (1) a clinical training component that provides both the didactic and practical experience necessary to achieve a superior level of clinical competency in the subspecialty of Rheumatology, (2) a research component tailored to the interests and future plans of the trainee, and (3) a teaching component that provides further experience for the trainees in the process of educating health professional students and practitioners.

We offer a broad range of opportunities in each of these programs. Our clinical training program provides experience with common rheumatic diseases as well as the less common systemic connective tissue diseases. Research opportunities are available in the areas of basic biomedical research (immunology, cell biology, and molecular biology) and clinical research (epidemiology and health services research). The fellows participate in the education of medical students, graduate students, faculty, and community practitioners. The fellowship training is supported by a staff of internationally recognized leaders in rheumatology, immunology, epidemiology, and related disciplines.

The development of an Arthritis Institute at the University of Pittsburgh became a reality in July, 1998. The goals of this Institute are to design and implement an integrated system of health care for arthritis patients, to foster basic and clinical research pertaining to arthritis and related conditions, and to provide arthritis education programs for patients, health care professionals, and the lay public.

The Arthritis Institute is comprised of a clinical component referred to as the Arthritis Network and a research component known as the Arthritis Research Center. At present the Arthritis Network has been expanded to 12 practice sites in Southwestern Pennsylvania staffed by 24 rheumatologists from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. There are over 40,000 patient visits at the regional Arthritis Centers annually. These Centers serve as sites for multidisciplinary patient care for arthritis and include rheumatology, rehabilitation, joint replacement, physical therapy and occupational therapy services. The commitment to the Arthritis Research Center, led to two grant awards from the NIH: (1) a construction grant to support the completion of a new research floor ($1 million, started 9/30/98); and (2) the Multipurpose Arthritis and MAMDC grant ($4.3 million total costs, started 9/25/97) which will support clinical and basic research programs in arthritis and related conditions. The assembly of this grant led to the identification of numerous investigators at the University actively engaged in research pertaining to arthritis, musculoskeletal diseases, and related basic and clinical research disciplines. The organization of this group of investigators into Basic and Clinical Research Programs resulted in numerous collaborations and it is anticipated that an increase in extramural research funding for arthritis research will be forthcoming. The Arthritis Institute formalizes these research programs and provides an infrastructure for further exchange of information, the continued development of collaborations, and expansion of specific research initiatives at UPMC. This programmatic organization is particularly important for the future development of translational (bench to bedside) research that will take advantage of the basic and clinical investigators and an expanding patient population.

The extramural funding for research in the Division currently exceeds $3.5 million annually.

The Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Pittsburgh Arthritis Institute, the Multipurpose Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Diseases Center and the Rheumatic Diseases Core Center continue to be at the forefront of clinical and basic science research. We are particularly interested in candidates for fellowship training who intend to pursue an academic research career.