Our Speakers
Professor Karl Gaffney - MBBChBAO(Hons) FRCPI FRCP
Consultant Rheumatologist, Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital
Professor Karl Gaffney (MB, BCh, BAO Hons, FRCPI, FRCP) has been a Consultant Rheumatologist in Norwich since 1995 where he is service lead for axial
spondyloarthritis (including ankylosing spondylitis), adolescent rheumatology and osteoporosis. He is an Honorary Professor at Norwich Medical School, chair of the medical advisory board, National Axial Spondyloarthritis Society (www.nass.co.uk), founder member, treasurer and chair-elect of BRITSpA www.britspa.co.uk), chair of the British Society for Rheumatology (BSR) axial SpA Biologics Guidelines Committee, member of the National Early Inflammatory Arthritis Project Working Group, vice-chair of the BSR Heberden Committee, co-director and founder of the East of England and London Spondyloarthritis Academy (www.spaacademy.org), and an invited member of the Assessment of Spondyloarthritis International Society www.asas-group.org.
He has also represented the BSR and NASS at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) appraisal of biological therapies since 2007. He was Rheumatology Service Director from 2008 until 2016, Director of Postgraduate Education in Norwich between 1999 and 2005, and Director of Rheumatology Training, Eastern Deanery between 2001 and 2007.
With NASS he has co-developed primary and secondary care educational programmes for healthcare professionals. These initiatives have been awarded national and European awards for excellence in healthcare communication. He is leading the NASS National Gold Standard Delay to Diagnosis project, launched at the House of Commons in July 2020 www.nass.co.uk/get-involved/gold-standard. His current research interests include epidemiology, dose optimisation and extra-articular manifestations of axial SpA. He oversees a large clinical trials programme and collaborates with other national and international centres. He has published extensively and has been an invited speaker at national and international meetings.
Dr Deepak Jadon - MBBCh(Hons) MRCP(Rheum) PhD
Consultant Rheumatologist, Cambridge University Hospitals
Dr Deepak Jadon is a consultant rheumatologist, Director of the Rheumatology Research Unit, and lead for psoriatic arthritis (PsA) at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge.
Having grown up in Cardiff, he graduated from the University of Wales College of Medicine in 2003, and then undertook clinical training in rheumatology and general internal medicine in Bath and Bristol between 2007-2015. He completed his PhD thesis on ‘biomarkers of psoriatic arthritis phenotypes’ at the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases (Bath, UK) in 2015.
Deepak has particular expertise in the investigation and management of psoriatic arthritis (PsA), ankylosing spondylitis (AS), spondyloarthritis (SpA) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). He is qualified in the use of musculoskeletal ultrasound.
Deepak is Director of the Rheumatology Research Unit at Cambridge University Hospitals NHSFT (Addenbrooke’s Hospital), where he leads a team of 5 research nurses, 3 rheumatology fellows, and 2 administrators. They are currently performing >20 clinical trials / studies of novel cutting-edge medications for the treatment of arthritis and other rheumatological diseases.
He is an Associate Principal Investigator in the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge. His research interests include genetic and serum biomarkers of PsA, AS and SpA, in particular those that predict prognosis.
Deepak is Theme Lead for E-learning at the University of Cambridge Clinical School, delivering high quality online learning to year 4-6 medical student.
Professor Stefan Siebert
University of Glasgow & Glasgow Royal Infirmary
Professor Stefan Siebert, MBBCH, FRCP, PhD is Professor of Inflammation Medicine and Rheumatology at the Institute of Infection, Immunity, and Inflammation in the University of Glasgow. He also works as Honorary Consultant Rheumatologist in the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde where he runs specialist psoriatic arthritis (PsA), complex inflammatory tendinopathy and tertiary referral academic clinics.
He leads the spondyloarthritis (SpA) and PsA clinical research programme in Glasgow and is the lead on several national and regional investigator-led studies. Research activities include disease pathogenesis, biomarkers, comorbidities, epidemiology, routine-data linkage, observational cohort studies and interventional studies. He has published widely in peer-reviewed journals.
He is the current Chair of the Versus Arthritis (formerly Arthritis Research UK) Adult Inflammatory Arthritis Research Advisory Group; on the global steering committee of GRAPPA; on the executive steering committees of both BRIT-SpA and BRIT-PACT (British SpA and PsA societies, respectively) and is a member of the Assessment of Spondyloarthritis International Society (ASAS).
Dr Sandeep Bawa
Dr Dale Webb
Dr. Dale Webb has been CEO of NASS since November 2017.
He studied Music and English as an undergraduate at the University of Aberystwyth, followed by an MSc and PhD in Health Policy at the University of Southampton. Dale’s PhD was entitled ‘Evaluation in a Policy Environment: Approaches to the evaluation of complex health policy pilots in the UK from 1994 to 2004’.
Dale worked in public health in the 1990s at Salisbury Health Authority and Wessex Regional Health Authority. He then joined the University of Southampton’s Institute of Public Health Medicine where he undertook numerous national evaluations of policy interventions for the English and Scottish Departments of Health.
Since 2006 Dale has worked for charitable organisations, first as Director of Strategy and Evaluation at the Health Foundation, then as Director of Research and Information at the Stroke Association.
Over the last 3 years at NASS, Dale has led the creation of an All Party Parliamentary Group on axial SpA and the Aspiring to Excellence healthcare improvement programme (the largest of its kind in rheumatology in the UK). In July 2020 he launched and A Gold Standard Time to Diagnosis, the first programme of its kind in the world to propose a one year gold standard time to diagnosis for axial SpA.
