Janet Pope

Dr. Janet Pope is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Rheumatology at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), Schulich School of Medicine, London, Ontario, Canada. She is the Division Head in Rheumatology at St. Joseph's Health Centre, London. She obtained her MD, and Fellowship in Internal Medicine at UWO and a Fellowship in Rheumatology and Masters of Public Health were acquired at Boston University. She then completed a Canadian Arthritis Society Research Fellowship in Scleroderma.

Janet is passionate about research, teaching, mentoring and excellent clinical care. She is a founding member of the Canadian Scleroderma Research Group (CSRG) and CaNIOS (Canadian Network for Improved Outcomes in SLE). She is a member of the Scleroderma Clinical Trials Consortium. She started and chaired for years both the Canadian Rheumatology Association (CRA) Clinical and Research Summer Studentships and the CRA Scientific Committee. She is on the Scientific Advisory Committee for the CATCH cohort (Canadian Early Arthritis Cohort) and the OBRI (Ontario Best Practice Research Initiative). She is on the Editorial Boards of Arthritis & Rheumatology, Journal of Rheumatology, and Nature Reviews Rheumatology. She chairs the Therapeutics Committee for the Ontario Rheumatology Association and is the chair for the Scientific Component of the Annual General Meeting at Western. Janet chairs the AMOSO Opportunities Fund grant review committee and has been on that committee for over a decade.

She is involved in mentorship both for junior faculty in the Faculty of Medicine, Western and in Rheumatology throughout Canada. She has run the Western-McMaster Resident weekend for more than 12 years (for PGY1,2s in Internal Medicine). Mentoring is one of her passions.

Her research includes epidemiologic studies in scleroderma, SLE and RA, including outcome measurements, clinical trials and disease manifestations. She has published over 455 peer-reviewed articles, 15 chapters, 500 abstracts and several Cochrane meta-analysis reviews. The h-index is 49 with more than 11,000 citations. She was the lead in the American College of Rheumatology and European League Against Rheumatism classification criteria for systemic sclerosis (scleroderma). Mentoring of students and trainees numbers more than 100 for research projects.  She was awarded the Lupus Hope Award. She has received the Distinguished Investigator Award from the Canadian Rheumatology Association, Rheumatologist of the Year from the Ontario Rheumatology Association, Department of Medicine Research Achievement Award, and the Dean’s Award of Excellence in Research.

She is interested in teaching, quality assurance, and other local, provincial and national projects. She accepts trainees for research projects.