Arthritis Foundation’s Leading Role in Arthritis Care

Arthritis Foundation President and CEO Steve Taylor took the stage at the ACR Convergence 2024 in a session focusing on osteoarthritis to discuss “The Arthritis Foundation’s Efforts Addressing the OA Public Health Agenda.” His presentation highlighted the Foundation’s development of arthritis-appropriate, evidence-based interventions (AAEBIs). 

Taylor explained that, in decades past, it was commonly thought that people with arthritis should forgo activity, believing that it would worsen arthritis. The Arthritis Foundation took a lead in research that determined that was inaccurate, and that physical activity is actually essential for managing pain and other symptoms.

The Foundation demonstrated that community-based fitness programs lead to less joint pain and better function as well as better health and quality of life overall for people with arthritis. That became the basis for widespread acceptance of physical activity as key to arthritis self-management.

The first evidence-based physical activity program for arthritis was the Arthritis Foundation’s Aquatics Program, which is still widely available through our partnership with the YMCA. We followed that by creating a land-based exercise program that could be done seated or standing, and by our Walk With Ease (WWE) program, both of which are validated by scientific research.

Walk With Ease resources are available at arthritis.org and through community organizations, while training for WWE leaders is offered in partnership with the National Association of Sports Medicine.

Taylor explained the programs using “a plane analogy: We built the plane — we built these programs and piloted them for a while. Then we turned them over to community partners to really lead these programs. And we’ve become kind of the air traffic controllers for the AAEBIs in the United States,” he said. 

Thanks to a grant from the CDC that helps fund our Helpline, he added, people can call and find these programs in their communities as well as help with insurance, getting information and support and much more. Providing these kinds of resources doesn’t help just patients, he points out, but it helps health care providers by having a place to refer patients for credible information and valuable resources.