The UNC-CH Multipurpose Arthritis Center (MAC) represents a broadly-based, coordinated effort by faculty and staff in the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health toward development of new basic knowledge, enhanced education, and improved mechanisms for health care delivery in arthritis. Providing special impetus and support in this regard are the following: Area Health Education Centers Program; N.C. Rehabilitation Network; UNC Rehabilitation Program; the on-going Arthritis Rehabilitation in Industry Program; and the N.C. State Arthritis Act and its legislated planning committee. Certain new directions in an already well-established immunology research program will be pursued, e.g. study of the idiotype/anti-idiotype network in human autoimmune disease, analysis of tissue deposited immune complex function in SLE, and the establishment of an Immunoreagent/Immunoassay Core Facility. The major thrust of MAC proposed activities, however, concerns a series of innovative projects in the Education and Community Components. These include: (1) study of a new psycho-social model for patient education; (2) development of educational models in arthritis for occupational and physical therapists, both as part of a core undergraduate curriculum, and also in the community for those already in practice; (3) development of a health care model for ambulatory elderly patients with arthritis to be conducted jointly by nurse practitioners and occupational therapists; (4) analysis of the Social Security Administration disability determination process for arthritis; (5) development of a model training program in arthritis and rehabilitation for industrial managers with applicability to the general problem of the worker with arthritis; (6) an epidemiologic study of patterns of arthritis care in Eastern North Carolina. In all of these projects, particular emphasis has been placed upon effective evaluation, which will be aided by an Evaluation Core.
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