Championing Change for Arthritis 

By Julie Peck | March 18, 2025

For this year’s winner of the Champion Changemaker Award, Kelly Chellis, arthritis advocacy is truly a family affair.

Kelly had her first run-in with arthritis when her child, Tris, was 6 years old. As Kelly describes it, the week of Tris’ sixth birthday, they just woke up one morning with a swollen knee the size of a softball. No injury, no accidents — just a ton of swelling, and the next morning, it had worsened. Born with a congenital heart defect, Tris has always been a fighter and asserted at the time that their knee didn’t hurt and they could go on to school. But Kelly’s instincts told her otherwise, so Tris went to the pediatrician, and eventually, to the children’s hospital.

There, Tris was placed on the infectious diseases floor: Tris’ X-rays were negative, and the assumption was that there was some kind of infection in their knee. The diagnostic turning point came one day when, just to pass the time, Kelly and Tris were doing some art together.

“Out of the blue, Tris wanted to draw a hand turkey. In March, that's kind of odd to want to draw a turkey, but I'm like, great, I'll trace your hand,” Kelly recalls. “When Tris laid their hand down on the table, their fingers would not actually lay flat. So that got rheumatology involved, and that’s when we heard the word ‘arthritis’ come out of the doctors’ mouths. I thought, what? That can't be. This is a 6-year-old child. I truly was one of those people who thought kids can’t get arthritis.”

Ironically, the philanthropy of Kelly’s fraternity as an undergrad was arthritis research. After Tris’ diagnosis with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), she returned to those efforts, in conjunction with the Arthritis Foundation.

“It was hard, at times, for me to figure out what to do (for Tris), so I threw myself into raising money and volunteering with the Foundation,” Kelly says. “At first, it was mainly doing the Jingle Bell Run and the Walk to Cure Arthritis, and talking to friends and raising awareness that kids get arthritis, too — that was one of my main goals.”

In 2019, the advocacy committee at the Arthritis Foundation invited Kelly and Tris to participate in Ohio’s Arthritis Advocacy Day at their statehouse, and they jumped right in.

“That was a day that definitely changed my outlook on what I could be doing within advocacy,” Kelly says. “Being able to tell our story and share our struggles with getting medications, the cost of the medications, the prior authorizations and all the hoops you have to jump through when you have a chronic disease — telling that story and being able to share it, it just really felt good that maybe change could happen. We left there feeling so good, like we were truly doing something that can make a difference, not just for Tris, but for everyone suffering with arthritis.”

Since then, Kelly has testified several times at the Ohio Legislature. The first time she testified was part of an effort with the Arthritis Foundation and some of its partners. Their efforts successfully put limits around “step therapy,” regulations that mandate that a patient must try a certain number of drugs (i.e. “steps”) before they can be given the drug that their doctor knows will work. Kelly says there’s always more work to be done, but she always looks back on that first trip to the state legislature with immense fondness. She says that day gave Tris a great deal of confidence to pursue their path toward a career in pediatric medicine. It also brought the two of them closer together, as has her own journey with arthritis, a trial they share that has been turned into a triumph with the help of the Foundation.

“All the things that Tris and I do with the Arthritis Foundation just bond us closer,” Kelly says. “I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis two-and-a-half years ago. Waking up with that morning pain and thinking of my child going through that for so many years, it all really brings us closer. Working together on such a good cause also brings us closer and just gives us a lot of satisfaction.”

Kelly has brought about so much good through her efforts, and we appreciate all that she does for the Arthritis Foundation. Congratulations to Kelly on being this year’s winner of the Champion Change