Laura Schanberg
Center Co-Principal Investigator, Steering Committee Voting Member
Dr. Schanberg received her MD from Duke University and has proudly spent her entire career as a pediatric rheumatologist with Duke Children’s Hospital. She has just stepped down as Co-Chief of the Division of Pediatric Rheumatology after holding the position for the last 10 years, is Professor of Pediatrics, and faculty at the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI). She treats an array of autoimmune conditions and illnesses in children, including inflammatory arthritis, lupus, inflammatory disease of the muscles and vasculitis; however, she has spent most of her professional time doing clinical research.
Dr. Schanberg is involved in hypothesis driven clinical research as well as clinical trials. Much of her research is focused on studying pain and other disease symptoms as they relate to stress and coping processes in children with chronic disease and their families. Particular interests include describing the pain experience of children with chronic arthritis and the role of parental processes in child adjustment to chronic disease.
Dr. Schanberg is actively engaged with the Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Association (CARRA), a network aimed at facilitating clinical research in pediatric rheumatology through collaboration. She was part of the founding Steering committee when CARRA began in 2002 and has served in multiple leadership positions including as chair. She continues on the CARRA Executive Committee as immediate past chair. Dr. Schanberg is PI of the CARRA Registry which was initially funded by the NIH as part of the American Recovery Act, but is now supported by industry and the Arthritis Foundation. The DCI CARRA Registry now includes over 60 CARRA sites and has enrolled over 3100 children with JIA since July of 2015.
Additionally, she was the Principal Investigator for an NIH funded 21 center interventional trial entitled Prevention of Cardiovascular Complications of SLE: Atherosclerosis Prevention in Pediatric Lupus (APPLE) in conjunction with the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI) and the Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Association (CARRA). Currently she is leading several clinical research efforts including both industry and investigator initiated clinical trials in addition to serving as Co-Principal Investigator of the Duke Center within the PEPR consortium.
