Cindy: 55 Year Old Female with RA Disease Activity Impairing Ability to Work

Jonathan Kay, MD, received his medical degree from the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco, California. He then completed an internship and residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and fellowships in rheumatology and immunology at The Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.

Dr. Kay is Professor of Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and a Physician at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, where he directs Clinical Research in the Division of Rheumatology.

Dr. Kay is a Fellow of the American College of Rheumatology and of the American College of Physicians. He is an ad hoc reviewer for many journals and a member of the editorial boards of Arthritis Care & Research, Best Practice and Research Clinical Rheumatology, and the Journal of Clinical Rheumatology.  

Dr. Kay's clinical interests span the spectrum of rheumatic diseases, with special interest in rheumatoid arthritis and other forms of inflammatory arthritis. He was a member of the group that developed the 2010 ACR/EULAR Diagnostic and Classification Criteria for Rheumatoid Arthritis. He chairs the Rheumatology Working Group and is a member of the Internal Medicine and Musculoskeletal Topic Advisory Groups for the World Health Organization in its Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-11.

He has been a principal investigator on over 40 clinical trials of novel therapies for rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, gout, and osteoarthritis. Over the past two decades, his clinical research has focused on nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (formerly known as nephrogenic fibrosing dermopathy), beta2-microglobulin amyloidosis, and other rheumatologic problems of patients with chronic kidney disease. Dr. Kay lectures internationally and is the author of more than 100 publications and book chapters.

Elena Massarotti, MD, practices general rheumatology in the rheumatology division of the Brigham and Women's Hospital, which is a large, full service, tertiary care referral center and a major teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. This is largely a referral-based practice, comprised of patients referred by primary care physicians, other sub-specialists, and other rheumatologists practicing in the northeastern United States. Dr. Massarotti provides consultation to patients presenting with complex clinical problems, including patients with challenging diagnoses.

In Dr. Massarotti's previous role as the clinical director of rheumatology at Tufts New England Medical Center, she was regarded as the senior clinical rheumatologist and oversaw the clinical care delivered in the clinic along with the division chief who identified and managed quality assurance goals (e.g. tracking of adverse events related to joint injections, patient educational materials for new medications) and instituted policies directed at enhancing patient care (e.g. prepared medication information sheets for patients). In 1998, Dr. Massarotti established the annual Merrill Lecture in Clinical Rheumatology at Tufts New England Medical Center with donated funds. This lectureship honored the clinical and translational contributions of outstanding rheumatologists, and was widely attended by the northeastern rheumatology community. In 2000, under the leadership of Dr. Allen Steere (the division chief of rheumatology at Tufts New England Medical Center at that time) Dr. Massarotti helped to design the new outpatient Itzhak Perlman Family Arthritis Treatment Center at Tufts-NEMC, which was a new clinic focused exclusively for patients with rheumatic diseases. From 2000-2003, Dr. Massarotti established "Patient Care Forums", which were faculty led patient seminars that focused on common rheumatic issues and were held during evening hours for patients and family members to attend. Beginning in 2004, Dr. Massarotti helped develop and grow a clinical trials program in the division of rheumatology.