Diane Lacaille is an assistant professor in the Division of Rheumatology at the University of British Columbia, and a research scientist at the Arthritis Research Centre of Canada, in Vancouver. She practices rheumatology at the Mary Pack Arthritis Centre and she has a hospital appointment at Vancouver Hospital Health Sciences Centre (VHHSC). She completed medical school and internal medicine training at McGill University in Montreal, and her Rheumatology training and a Master’s in Health Sciences, clinical epidemiology track, at the University of British Columbia.

Her research focuses on two areas: 1) Studying the impact of arthritis on employment and preventing work disability. 2) Evaluating the quality of health care services received by people with RA, using a population-based cohort of RA for the province of BC.

Currently she is funded by an Investigator Award from the Arthritis Society of Canada. Previously she was funded by a New Investigator Award from Canadian Institutes of Health Research and The Arthritis Society of Canada, as well as from a Research Scholar Award from VHHSC.

She holds peer-reviewed operating grant funding for her research from the CIHR, CAN, She also holds a NET grant with a team of researchers (PI: Dr Esdaile) evaluating early OA. She has published her research in Arthritis and Rheumatism, Journal of Rheumatology, Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, Canadian Medical Association Journal, Human Immunology, Health Policy, Lancet, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology.

She is a member of the Canadian Arthritis Network, Co-Leader of Theme 5, member of the Training and Education Committee. She is a member of the OMERACT Special Interest Group working on measures for evaluating employment. She is also a member on the Young Investigator Subcommittee of the American College of Rheumatology Committee on Research, the Editorial Board of the Arthritis Care and Research Journal and of the Journal of the Canadian Rheumatology Association.

She has received distinction awards for her contribution to rheumatology research, including the Young Investigator Award from the Canadian Rheumatology Association and the Quality of Life Research Award from the Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis (IMHA)—a distinction award for having obtained the highest score of all applications in Arthritis, Pain and Disability. Finally, she was a recipient of the Martin M. Hoffman Award for Excellence in Research at the University of British Columbia.

Building on her research on employment and arthritis, she has developed the first comprehensive program specifically designed to prevent Work Disability (WD) in employed people with inflammatory arthritis, such as RA. The program enhances self-management of problems encountered at work due to arthritis and modifies risk factors for WD. The program was pilot tested and showed promising results. It resulted in concrete changes and improved self-confidence and self-rated productivity at work. Next, she plans to test the program’s effectiveness at reducing WD in a randomized controlled trial. By preventing WD, this research will reduce the tremendous economic and social burden of RA.

As part of her research evaluating the quality of care for RA at the population level, she has assembled a population-based cohort of RA patients in BC. This research has exposed important gaps in care for RA. She found that the majority of RA patients do not receive the care that is recommended for their disease. More than half are not using the medications considered essential for RA (DMARDs) and few are followed by rheumatologists. These results point to the need for educating family physicians and people with RA about the shift in treatment paradigms in RA, and to the need for increased rheumatologist access and manpower. This research is important to people with RA and their health care providers and has potential to improve the quality of care and outcome of RA. She is now working on understanding the underlying reasons for the gaps identified and on developing strategies to address these gaps.