Association of Women in Rheumatology

Dedicated to promoting the science and practice of Rheumatology while fostering the advancement and education of women in Rheumatology.

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

Thirty percent of our membership is men, and we mean it when we say that is not incidental.

AWIR's mission is advancing women in rheumatology and advocating for the highest quality care for patients everywhere. That work moves considerably faster when male colleagues are genuinely part of it.

Not as spectators. As the person who notices that the same woman is asked to take notes at every meeting. Who redirects credit to whoever actually did the work. Who names a colleague for the speaking slot instead of accepting it by default. Who asks what the salary band is.

None of that requires a title or a committee seat. It requires paying attention in rooms where you already have standing.

To the men already doing this quietly, thank you. And if you have been wondering whether you would be welcome here, you are: https://t.co/bluai5TiRO

#AWIR #Allyship #WomenInMedicine #Rheumatology #Membership

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

Your patient was finally stable. Then a formulary change or step-therapy rule pulled the medication controlling their disease.

The three largest PBMs control nearly 80% of U.S. prescriptions, and have excluded more than 1,150 medicines from their formularies. Patients pay the price in flares, missed work, and worse outcomes.

AWIR is pushing for rebate transparency, point-of-sale discounts, and limits on policies that delay care. Clinician voices move legislators, and it takes five minutes to add yours.

Take action: https://t.co/YbozoHCli2

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

Nobody reads it all. The volume of new rheumatology literature exceeds what any practicing clinician can process, and pretending otherwise just adds guilt on top of everything else you are carrying.

The realistic goal is different. Know which developments would actually change what you do, and go deep on those.

That requires somebody to filter, which is much of what good CME is for. A session that tells you where a new therapy fits, what it displaces, and which patients it does not help saves you a week of reading and produces a better decision at the end of it.

Ours are free or low cost, accredited, and available on demand. Take what is useful to you and leave the rest.

Have a look: https://t.co/8g0HiefRnA

#AWIR #CME #Rheumatology #MedicalEducation #ContinuingEducation

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

Most of us join a professional society for the CME credits. AWIR members tell us they stay for something else: the people.

The colleague you text about a tricky case. The mentor who calls back. The chapter dinner where everyone already gets it.

With 80+ local chapters and 4,000+ members worldwide, AWIR is where rheumatology professionals find collaborators, co-authors, mentors, and friends.

Come for the education. Stay for the people.

Join AWIR: https://t.co/bluai5TiRO

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

A Local Chapter is not a social club with a CME line item attached. Treated well, it is the most responsive education you have access to.

National programming gets planned months ahead. A chapter can put a topic on the agenda because three people mentioned the same problem last month. A new therapy nobody has sequenced yet. A payer policy that just changed in your state. A diagnostic question that keeps coming up locally.

Our chapters exist for scientific updates, case discussions, and real conversation about the challenges and the rewards of clinical practice. They are free for anyone to attend.

So if there is something you and your colleagues need to talk through, say so. Chapter leaders would much rather build a meeting around a real question than guess at one.

#AWIR #LocalChapters #CME #Rheumatology #MedicalEducation

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

Negotiation gets framed as asking for more money, which is exactly why so many clinicians avoid it entirely.

Reframe it and the discomfort drops considerably. Most of what needs negotiating in a medical career is not salary. It is the second infusion nurse. Protected time for the project. A schedule that does not set you up to fail. Support staff for the prior authorization work eating your evenings.

Those are requests on behalf of patient care, and they turn out to be far easier to make than requests on behalf of yourself.

AWIR provides practice development support for exactly this, including contract review techniques and negotiation skills, plus members who have already had the conversation you are dreading.

You really should not have to work this out alone.

#AWIR #Leadership #Negotiation #Rheumatology #WomenInMedicine

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

Randomized trials answer a narrow question extremely well. Does this work, in these patients, under these conditions.

Your clinic is not those conditions. Your patients have the comorbidities the protocol excluded, take the medications it prohibited, and miss doses in ways nobody ever recorded.

Real-world evidence exists to cover that distance, and AWIR members are actively building it. Our teams are looking at how insurance policy practices affect treatment access, how air quality relates to lupus onset, and how historical redlining shows up in psoriatic disease outcomes.

Messier than a trial, and able to answer questions a trial never could.

If your everyday practice keeps showing you something the literature has not caught up to yet, we would really like to hear about it.

#AWIR #Research #RealWorldEvidence #Rheumatology #ClinicalResearch

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

Legislators and their staff see data constantly. What actually stays with them is the patient.

The teacher who could not lift her arms to write on the board and waited five months for a first appointment. The person whose disease progressed while their coverage changed hands. One specific, ordinary, true story that turns an abstract policy consequence into something real.

You do not need to be a policy expert to do this well. Our advocates work on the frontline of health care and have firsthand knowledge of what patients endure, and that is the whole qualification.

If you would like help shaping it, our Advocacy 101 Toolkit was written for the busy working rheumatologist, and our government affairs staff will reach out when support is needed in your state or federally.

You already have the story. We would love to help you tell it: https://t.co/YbozoHCli2

#AWIR #Advocacy #Rheumatology #PatientAccess #HealthPolicy

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

Some of the best professional relationships in this community started in a chat window during a virtual session.

Someone asks a question you have also been wrestling with. You reply. A year later you are exchanging protocols, comparing how a therapy performs in two very different health systems, or writing something together.

Geography used to decide who you could learn from. It does not anymore, as long as somebody builds the room where those conversations can happen.

That is a large part of what AWIR does internationally. Our Summits alone bring together hundreds of participants each year from more than 20 countries, and the connections tend to outlast the session.

If you have been quietly reading along without ever saying anything, we would genuinely love to meet you.

#AWIR #GlobalHealth #Rheumatology #WomenInRheumatology #MedicalCommunity

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

"We would host trials, but we are not set up for it."

Fair, and far more solvable than it sounds. The requirements are real but finite: a coordinator, regulatory processes, storage and monitoring capacity, and an honest view of how much protocol work your practice can absorb alongside clinic.

What usually makes the difference is not money. It is talking to a practice that has already done it and getting a straight answer about what the first year was really like.

AWIR's clinical research committee has years of experience across basic and clinical research and complies with Good Clinical Practice guidelines. Our members include practices that started exactly where you are standing now.

If you have thought about this and stalled, the next step is a conversation rather than a capital investment. Reach out whenever you are ready: https://t.co/dV7NC8PWjU

#AWIR #ClinicalTrials #Rheumatology #ClinicalResearch #PrivatePractice

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

Some of the most useful sessions are the ones where two specialists disagree in front of you.

That is deliberate. Rather than one expert presenting settled material, our Summits tend to pair rheumatology with the specialty that shares the patient. Our series has done this with cardiology, pulmonary, gastroenterology, dermatology and pediatric rheumatology, and this year with obesity medicine.

What comes out of it is the part you cannot get from a guideline. Where the two fields genuinely diverge, which sequencing decisions are still unresolved, and what each specialist quietly wishes the other would stop doing.

Your complex patients live in that overlap. Your education should be meeting them there.

#AWIR #Summits #CollaborativeCare #Rheumatology #CME

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

The years spent raising children or caring for aging parents get read on a CV as absence. Anyone who has actually lived them knows better.

People come back from those years better at triage, better at delivering bad news, better at explaining something complicated to someone who is frightened, and considerably more efficient with their time. None of it fits neatly under a skills heading.

The structural problem is that promotion timelines, research funding cycles and leadership pipelines were built around uninterrupted trajectories, which quietly filters out anyone whose life was not uninterrupted. AWIR names this as part of the leaky pipeline, and it is why we push for things like family leave policies that actually work.

If you stepped back at some point and have been wondering whether the door is still open, it is.

#AWIR #EDI #WomenInMedicine #Rheumatology #Caregiving

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

Explore the Overlap of Obesity and Psoriatic Diseases 💜

How can we better understand the relationship between obesity and psoriatic diseases? Join AWIR for a virtual summit featuring expert perspectives from **Juliana S. Simonetti, MD**, Director of Obesity Medicine at the University of Utah, and **Alexis R. Ogdie, MD, MSCE**, Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

📅 October 24 | 12:00 PM to 3:45 PM EST

Earn 1.5 CME/MOC credits while engaging with important clinical topics in rheumatology.

📍 Looking to connect with colleagues? Find a watch party near you and experience the event together!

✨ Registration is free.

Visit https://t.co/YAY1tw3t8P to learn more and register.

#AWIR #Rheumatology #PsoriaticDisease #ObesityMedicine

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

GLP-1/GIP therapies aren’t approved for psoriatic disease, but many of our PsD patients are already taking them or asking about them.

This Saturday, AWIR's Virtual Summit pairs two experts to help us catch up:
Juliana Simonetti, MD, DABOM Director of the Obesity Medicine Program at the University of Utah, on the metabolic and inflammatory links between obesity and PsD.
Alexis Ogdie,MD, MSCE Director of the Penn Psoriatic Arthritis Clinic, on what the evidence means for PsA treatment decisions.

Free with 1.5 CME/MOC. Tune in from home or bring your questions to a local AWIR Watch Party at a restaurant near you. Connect with colleagues in your area while live-streaming the Summit. Open to clinicians only.

Register today: https://t.co/nhdnbUgKLZ

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

If colleagues route their difficult questions to you, if people check with you before making a decision, if the new hire watches how you handle a hard conversation, then you are already leading. Whatever the org chart says.

We mention this because so many clinicians tell us they are not leadership material while describing exactly that.

At AWIR we put it directly. Leadership is not a luxury or a title. It is an opportunity for every clinician, whether new to the field or well established, to advocate, to build, and to influence policy and practice.

So when a formal role does come up, the honest answer to "am I ready for this?" is usually that you have been doing the work informally for years and nobody ever named it.

We would love to help you name it. Have a look at what is open: [LINK]

#AWIR #Leadership #WomenInMedicine #Rheumatology #MedicalLeadership

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

The first AWIR event you attend can feel awkward. Everyone seems to know each other, you are not quite sure where to stand, and you leave wondering whether it was worth the evening.

Please come back anyway.

By the third or fourth time, something shifts. People remember your practice setting. Someone asks how that situation you mentioned last time turned out. You start having opinions about which sessions are worth it. Somebody asks you to help with something.

That is not luck. It is simply how communities work, and it is why our chapters keep meeting throughout the year rather than once.

If your first one felt fine but unremarkable, that is completely normal. Give us another go.

Here is what is coming up: https://t.co/8eNq2vuPvW

#AWIR #Rheumatology #LocalChapters #MedicalCommunity #WomenInRheumatology

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

Join an AWIR Watch Party Near You! 💜

Connect with colleagues, share insights, and expand your rheumatology knowledge at an upcoming AWIR watch party!

On October 24 from 12:00 PM to 3:45 PM EST, join us for the virtual summit, “Navigating the Overlap of Obesity and Psoriatic Diseases.” This educational program offers 1.5 CME/MOC credits and an opportunity to engage with important topics in rheumatology alongside the AWIR community.

✨ Registration is free!

Gather with fellow healthcare professionals, strengthen connections, and be part of the conversation shaping rheumatology care.

🔗 Visit https://t.co/8eNq2vuPvW to register and learn more.

#AWIR #Rheumatology #PsoriaticDisease #Obesity #CME

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

There is a specific kind of exhaustion in being told to prescribe something you already know will not work for this patient, because a policy requires them to fail it first.

If you have sat in that appointment feeling powerless, you are not alone and you are not overreacting.

Step therapy and non-medical switching are both on AWIR's official policy priorities, along with accumulator adjustment programs and prior authorization. We say it plainly: patients should not suffer because of arbitrary changes or fail-first requirements in their pharmacy benefits, and none of it should be undermining your role in clinical decision making.

Our board and our advocates have spoken before Congress, lobbied state and federal representatives, and organized around these exact issues.

You do not have to carry this alone in a clinic room. Bring it here: https://t.co/YbozoHCli2

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

In much of the world, a patient with inflammatory arthritis will never see a rheumatologist. Not because the disease is rare, but because specialists are concentrated in a handful of cities, and sometimes in a handful of countries.

If you are the only rheumatologist for a whole region, or the internist doing your best without one anywhere nearby, we want you to know that we think about you often.

That is part of why AWIR keeps its education open to everyone. Our Summits are free and open to the whole rheumatology community, in the US and beyond, with hundreds of participants joining each year from more than 20 countries.

Every generalist who learns to recognize inflammatory disease early, start appropriate treatment and know when to refer is quietly extending the reach of this specialty.

#AWIR #GlobalHealth #Rheumatology #PatientAccess #FreeCME

[Association of Women in Rheumatology @AWIRGROUP]

Got plans next Saturday, October 24? Lunch is on us.

AWIR Local Chapters are hosting Watch Parties for our free virtual Summit on GLP-1/GIP therapies in psoriatic disease.

Livestream the experts, then talk through the data and your cases with clinicians in rheumatology, endocrinology, and related specialties in your area who share your patients.

Earn 1.5 CME/MOC, meet your local referral network, and leave with answers you can use in clinic on Monday.

Join us in Albany, Anchorage, Bethlehem, Buffalo, Dallas, Denver, Fort Lauderdale, Iowa City, Jacksonville, Marlboro, Minneapolis, Richmond, Roanoke, Sacramento, San Juan (PR), Toronto (Canada), or Wichita.

Seats at each table are limited. Register now to save your spot.

https://t.co/nhdnbUgKLZ