Board of Directors

The Gout Education Society is comprised of a Board of medical professionals who specifically treat gout – the most common form of inflammatory arthritis. The Board members share our commitment to raising awareness about the growing number of patients with gout, and are dedicated to making sure more sufferers receive a proper diagnosis and ongoing, necessary treatment.

Board members help guide efforts supported by the Gout Education Society and regularly review educational content and resources that are made available to the general public and to health care professionals. The Board convenes every year during the American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting.

2023 Gout Education Society Board of Directors

N Lawrence Edwards JSJ 6JJ2416

Dr. N. Lawrence Edwards is Professor of Medicine, Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, as well as Program Director and Vice Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Dr. Edwards obtained his undergraduate training at the University of Notre Dame and his medical degree from the University of Miami School of Medicine. He completed his training in Rheumatology at the Rackham Arthritis Research Center and the Clinical Research Center, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where he remained on the faculty as Director of Education and Training in the Division of Rheumatology. In 1983 he moved to the University of Florida where he is the former Chief of the Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology and former Rheumatology Program Director for 15 years. For the past 19 years he has been Vice Chairman of the Department of Medicine and Program Director of the Medicine Residency Training Program at the University of Florida.

Dr. Edwards is an active member of many professional organizations including the American College of Rheumatology, American College of Physicians, the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine and is Past-President of the National Society of Clinical Rheumatologists. He is on the Executive Board of the Florida Chapter of ACP, the Co-chair of the Gout Interest Group for OMERACT between 2005-2016 and the Chairman and CEO of the Gout Education Society since its founding in 2005. He has authored over one hundred and fifty scientific articles, book chapters and reviews on the topics of hyperuricemia, gout, and purine metabolism. He is a Master of both the American College of Physicians and the American College of Rheumatologists.

Hyon K. Choi, MD, DrPH

Hyon K. Choi is the Mary Pack Arthritis Society Chair in Rheumatology, an associate professor in medicine and staff rheumatologist at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver General Hospital in Vancouver, Canada, and an epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. In addition, he is a board member of the Gout Education Society.

Dr. Choi also is a member of the American College of Rheumatology and has served as the director of Outcomes Research at the Rheumatology Unit of Massachusetts General Hospital. He has reviewed for the NIH and for editorial boards of major publications such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet and Arthritis & Journal of Rheumatism.

Dr. Choi’s research interests include gout, rheumatoid arthritis and vasculitis, as well as clinical research/epidemiology in rheumatic diseases. Recently, he has led large-scale epidemiologic studies for gout based on Health Professionals and Nurses Health cohorts. He has authored and co-authored more than 90 publications and has been an invited speaker at conferences around the world.

He received both a master’s and a doctorate degree in epidemiology from Harvard University. Dr. Choi also received rheumatology fellowship training at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.

Dr. Richard Johnson Headshot

Richard J. Johnson, M.D.

Richard J. Johnson is a professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Renal Diseases and Hypertension at the University of Colorado, Denver, and an adjunct professor of medicine at the University of Florida. In addition, he is a board member of the Gout Education Society.

Dr. Johnson is an expert on uric acid as it may relate to hypertension, obesity and cardiovascular disease. He also is an expert on the role of sugar and fructose in gout and uric acid related diseases and is author of the Sugar Fix (Rodale and Simon and Schuster, 2009).

Dr. Johnson has received numerous honors in his career including the American Society of Nephrology/American Heart Association Young Investigator Award and membership in the American Society of Clinical Investigation. He has lectured in more than 30 countries and received several distinguished lectureships, including the Inaugural Priscilla Kincaid-Smith Visiting Professor in Australia and the Tokyo Forum speaker. He has been a member of numerous editorial boards for publications such as Kidney International, Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, American Journal of Kidney Disease, Hypertension, American Journal of Physiology and American Journal of Nephrology.

He is coeditor of Comprehensive Clinical Nephrology with Dr. John Feehally, which is highly regarded as one of the better clinical textbooks in nephrology. He also has published more than 400 articles, for which more than 50 have received more than 100 citations.

Dr. Johnson received his medical degree from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and then underwent his residency in internal medicine and fellowships in nephrology and infectious diseases at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.

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Brian Mandell, MD, PhD, MACR, MACP

Brian Mandell is Professor and Chairman of Academic Medicine and a Senior Staff Physician in Rheumatology and Immunologic Diseases, Center for Vasculitis Care and Research at the Cleveland Clinic. He is Editor in Chief of the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine. 

Dr. Mandell joined the Cleveland Clinic in 1993 following a faculty appointment at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Chief of Rheumatology at the Graduate Hospital. He previously earned a BA in Biology and a PhD in Physiology and Biophysics from Washington University, St. Louis, and then a Medical Degree from New York University School of Medicine. He trained in medicine and Rheumatology. He served as interim Director of Inflammation Research and Exploratory Clinical Pharmacology at CIBA Pharmaceuticals. 

He has served on or chaired national education planning and writing committees for the American College of Rheumatology (ACR), the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) and the American College of Physicians (ACP), including serving as chairman of the Annual Meeting Planning Committee for both the ACP and ACR. He served as Vice Chairman of the ACGME Internal Medicine Residency Review Committee until 2019. He has served on the Editorial Board of several journals including Arthritis Care and Research, J Clin Rheumatology, and Arthritis and Rheumatology. As well as serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine and a Proffessor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. 

He has published 200+ articles, chapters, and editorials in peer-reviewed publications and several books related to clinical and basic aspects of medical science as well as medical education. He edited a recent textbook on Synovial Fluid Analysis. He is a clinical investigator and has a special interest in gout as well as vasculitis and multi-system inflammatory diseases. 

Joan McTigue, MS, PA-C

Joan McTigue, MS, PA-C

Joan McTigue is a physician assistant in the Division of Rheumatology at the University of Florida College of Medicine and the VA Medical Center in Gainesville, Florida. In addition, she is a board member of the Gout Education Society.

Ms. McTigue’s area of interest is patient education and patient advocacy. She has been on the board of directors for several community and educational nonprofit organizations including Gainesville Women’s Health Center and the Gainesville chapter of The Arthritis Foundation. She is currently the associate scientific editor for the American College of Rheumatology web based post-graduate rheumatology training program for physician assistants and nurse practitioners.

Ms. McTigue also is on the editorial staff of ADVANCE for Physician Assistants and a peer reviewer for The Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants. She has authored numerous articles and has been a study coordinator or co-investigator on numerous research projects in both women’s health and rheumatology.

Ms. McTigue received her bachelor’s degree in health science from State University of New York in Stony Brook, New York, and a master’s in health science from University of Nebraska in Omaha, Nebraska.

Maha Saad Photo

Maha Saad, PharmD, BCGP, BCPS

Maha Saad is an Associate Clinical Professor at St. John’s University, College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Queens, New York. She is the co-director of the St. John’s University Drug Information Center at Long Island Jewish Medical/North Shore Long Island Jewish Health System in New Hyde Park, New York, where she also serves as a preceptor for Pharm. D. students and pharmacy residents. In addition, she is a board member of the Gout Education Society.

Dr. Saad is also a Certified Geriatric Pharmacist (CGP) and a Board Certified Pharmacotherapy Specialist (BCPS). Prior to her faculty appointment at St. John’s University, she was a clinical coordinator at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, New York.

Her research interests include geriatric drug therapy, pain management, medication management in the elderly and the palliative care patients and pharmacogenomics.

Dr. Saad earned her bachelors in pharmacy and doctor of pharmacy degree from the Lebanese American University. She completed a Geriatric residency and a Fellowship in Geriatric Psychopharmacology at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Tuhina Neogi HeadshotTuhina Neogi, MD, PhD

Neogi is a rheumatologist and epidemiologist whose research has focused primarily on risk factors for knee osteoarthritis and gout, pain mechanisms in knee osteoarthritis, as well as methodologic issues of relevance for rheumatic diseases. She has had continuous peer-reviewed foundation and NIH funding since 2003, and have over 300 peer-reviewed publications to date. She is a past chair of the FDA Arthritis Advisory Committee, serve(d) on the boards two international societies: Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI) and Gout, Hyperuricemia, and Crystal-Associated Diseases Network (G-CAN), and on committees for the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) and International Association for the Study Pain (IASP), among others. Neogi’s work has been recognized with the prestigious 2014 ACR Henry Kunkel Young Investigator Award for outstanding and promising independent contributions to rheumatology research (awarded to no more than one clinical researcher and/or one basic science researcher each year), and the 2022 OARSI Clinical Research Award (in recognition of important contributions to OA research). She has also engaged in developing new classification criteria for a number of rheumatic diseases. In addition to research, clinical work, and teaching, one of her key roles is to mentor trainees and junior faculty in musculoskeletal disease-related research. To that end, she was awarded the 2016 Robert Dawson Evans Research Mentoring Award. She also developed and led the new CTSI Research Career Support Program initiative, PRIME (Pathways to Research Independence and Mentoring Excellence), which aims to support early career mentored researchers to successfully transition to becoming independent researchers.

Kenneth Saag HeadshotKenneth G. Saag, M.D., MSc

Kenneth Saag received his MD degree from Northwestern University in 1986, did residency and a Chief Resident Year at Northwestern affiliated Evanston Hospital and completed his fellowship in Rheumatology at the University of Iowa, where he also earned an MS degree in Epidemiology. He is currently the Water’s Endowed Professor and Director of clinical immunology and rheumatology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He is also the director of two UAB research centers: the Comprehensive Arthritis, Musculoskeletal, Bone, and Autoimmunity Center (CAMBAC) and the Center of Research Translation (CoRT) in Gout and Hyperuricemia.

Dr. Saag’s research focuses on the comparative effectiveness and safety of therapeutics, as well as methods to improve the quality of care in gout and osteoporosis. He has become a leading authority in osteoporosis-causing conditions and his contributions have led to current prevention and treatment guidelines. He has published 400 peer-reviewed manuscripts and authored more than 150 reviews, editorials, and book chapters.  He has been a successful research mentor, training over 20 post-doctoral fellows and junior faculty.

He has received numerous awards, including the Department of Medicine Research Award, the American College of Rheumatology Research Foundation Excellence in Investigative Mentoring Award, the European Calcified Tissue Society Excellence in Research Award, and the University of Iowa School of Public Health Distinguished Alumni Award. He was elected to the Association of American Physicians, is the immediate past president of the American College of Rheumatology and past-president of the National Osteoporosis Foundation Board of Trustees.

Nicholas Romansky HeadshotNicholas Romansky, DPM

As a Board-Certified Diplomate of the American Board of Podiatric Surgery, Dr. Romansky earned his undergraduate bachelor’s degree at Hartwick College in New York and a graduate degree in Exercise Physiology/Cardiac Rehabilitation at The Pennsylvania State University. His podiatric medicine degree was accomplished at Pennsylvania College of Podiatric Medicine followed with a one-year residency at Riverside Hospital in Ohio and an additional year of residency at Hayward Hospital in California. Dr. Romansky completed his training with a yearlong Foot and Ankle Orthopedic Fellowship in the San Francisco area.

Dr. Romansky is a contributing editor to Podiatry Today magazine and lectures nationwide for various organizations. He is a team podiatrist for the U.S. Men’s and Women’s National and World Cup Soccer Teams, a design consultant to multiple shoe gear companies and a medical consultant to many of Philadelphia’s professional sports teams. Most recently, Dr. Romansky has been working as a health consultant for the Major League Baseball Umpires Association (MLBUA).

In his free time, Dr. Romansky enjoys watching sports, landscaping, running, and cross-training. He also likes traveling, meeting new people, and trying foreign food.

H. Ralph Schumacher, Jr., MD (Founding Member)

In Memoriam of Founding Member H. Ralph Schumacher, Jr., MD

H. Ralph Schumacher was a founding member of the Gout Education Society and served as a board member since the Society’s conception in September 2005. He also served as a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Dr. Schumacher held appointments at the VA Medical Center and Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for nearly 40 years. He was an honorary member of eight international professional and scientific societies, as well as a guest lecturer, visiting professor and speaker at numerous conferences around the world.

He was the editor of the Journal of Clinical Rheumatology and the former editor of the Primer on the Rheumatic Diseases. Dr. Schumacher sat on eight editorial boards, and authored nearly 500 scientific papers and five books in his career.

He was a recipient of many prestigious awards, including the Klemperer Award from the American College of Rheumatology and the Van Breeman Medal for Rheumatology from the Netherlands Rheumatism Society.

Dr. Schumacher received a bachelor’s degree from Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, and his medical degree from University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He completed his residency at Wadsworth VA Hospital in Los Angeles, California, and fellowships in rheumatology at Wadsworth VA Hospital and University of California Los Angeles Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, and at both Robert B. Brigham Hospital and Harvard Medical School, both in Boston, Massachusetts.

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