O’Dell Named President-elect of American College of Rheumatology
ATLANTA – James R. O’Dell, MD, Larson professor of internal medicine; chief, section of rheumatology; vice-chairman and residency program director, department of internal medicine, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Neb. was appointed president-elect of the American College of Rheumatology during the ACR's annual business meeting, held Wednesday, November 10 in Atlanta.
Dr. O’Dell received his undergraduate degree at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in electrical engineering. He received his medical degree and completed a residency and chief residency in internal medicine at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine. Dr. O’Dell completed a clinical and research fellowship in rheumatology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver in 1984 and is board certified in both internal medicine and rheumatology.
Dr. O’Dell founded and has directed the Rheumatoid Arthritis Investigational Network for the last 20 years. RAIN is a group of rheumatologists who conduct investigator-initiated trials to find better treatments for rheumatoid arthritis. This research network has pioneered the use of combinations of medications to treat rheumatoid arthritis—one of the first groups to describe genetic factors that predict response to therapy—and has done extensive work with the use of minocycline in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Dr O’Dell is the principal investigator of the large multinational RA research study based at the VA through their cooperative studies program. This trial that also has NIH funding is comparative effectiveness research at its best in a double-blind placebo controlled randomized trial.
Dr. O’Dell has published extensively, mostly in the area of rheumatoid arthritis and recently authored “Drug Therapy: Rheumatoid Arthritis” for the New England Journal of Medicine. He has presented frequently at national and international meetings and has more than 100 published articles in top level rheumatology journals. He has received many awards for teaching excellence, was recently honored with the Nebraska ACP Laureate Award and as a distinguished Scientist at UNMC. In 2008, he received the Department of Internal Medicine Career Research award. Dr. O’Dell has served on numerous ACR committees over the last 20 years including time on both the ACR’s and ACR Research and Education Foundation’s boards of directors as well as a two-year term as president of the Research and Education Foundation and was most recently secretary of the College. Additionally, he recently served as co-editor of Arthritis and Rheumatism.
The American College of Rheumatology is an international professional medical society that represents more than 8,000 rheumatologists and rheumatology health professionals around the world. Its mission is to advance rheumatology. The ACR/ARHP Annual Scientific Meeting is the premier meeting in rheumatology. For more information about the meeting, visit www.rheumatology.org/education or join the conversation on Twitter by using the official hashtag: #ACR2010.
