Lakshmi Nandini Moorthy, MD (MBBS), MS

Lakshmi Nandini Moorthy is Professor of Pediatrics at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Chief of Pediatric Rheumatology Services at the Bristol-Myers Squibb Children’s Hospital at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital. She completed her pediatric rheumatology fellowship at the Hospital for Special Surgery–Cornell Medical Center, along with a Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services Research at Cornell. She joined Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS) in 2003 and has led the pediatric rheumatology service since.

Dr. Moorthy developed SMILEY© (Simple Measure of Impact of Lupus Erythematosus in Youngsters), a health-related quality-of-life measure designed for children with systemic lupus erythematosus, now adapted in more than thirty countries through the International SMILEY© Collaborative Group.  She was Principal Investigator of the Pediatric Alliance for Lupus initiative, funded by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health / Office of Minority Health (OASH/OMH), and is Site Principal Investigator for the Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA) and Pediatric Vasculitis (Ped-Vas) registries. Her national service includes the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) Pediatric Special Committee, the ACR Committee on Quality of Care, and the ACR/CARRA Mentoring Interest Group (AMIGO) mentoring program. She was elected to the Society for Pediatric Research in 2021 and to Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) in 2020, and has completed ACR Rheumatology Research Foundation (REF)/Amgen Visiting Professorships.

Health-related quality of life and patient-reported outcomes in childhood rheumatic disease; mentorship and education of trainees, patients and caregivers; narrative medicine in clinical training; and community engagement.

Dr. Moorthy’s research spans the measurement of health-related quality of life in childhood rheumatic disease, community-engaged work to reduce disparities in pediatric lupus, multicenter registry research, and narrative medicine in clinical education.

Patient-centered outcomes in childhood lupus. Dr. Moorthy developed and validated SMILEY©, the first health-related quality-of-life instrument built for children with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), with different funding sources. She has examined the relationship between quality of life, disease activity, and disease damage in prospective international cohorts, bringing the patient’s own account of illness into the center of pediatric rheumatic disease research.

Health disparities, minority health, and community-engaged research. Through the Pediatric Alliance for Lupus initiative, Dr.Moorthy developed culturally sensitive educational materials for patients with Lupus. She is serving as a Co-Investigator on a pilot study of emotional experiences among South Asian stroke survivors through the Center for Asian Health Promotion and Equity (CAHPE), funded by the National Institutes of Health / National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIH/NIMHD), and has led New Jersey Health Foundation work on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and also has been involved in work on mental health in South Asian youth funded by New Jersey Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science (NJ ACTS) — both grounded in a culture-centered approach.

Transition of care and education. Dr. Moorthy has led and mentored the Pediatric to Adult Transition to Healthcare (PATH) program at RWJMS, working with medical students to build transition resources, including a dedicated website. She has contributed to the ACR Collaborative Initiatives (COIN) workgroup for the School Health Outreach Project, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for which she developed and updated childhood lupus education for school health nurses.

Narrative medicine and the medical humanities. Her current work includes narrative medicine and art-based interventions in pediatric rheumatology, examining how attending closely to patient and clinician stories affects connection, wellness, and burnout. She is a co-author on a CARRA narrative medicine pilot intervention among pediatric rheumatology fellows, presented at ACR Convergence 2024 and now in press, and serves on the CARRA Narrative Medicine Committee.

• Lanis Levy A, Spitznagle J, Cook K, Vora SS, Hays K, Murphy Schmidt K, Wells C, Bartley A, Moorthy LN. Wellness, Resilience, and Burnout Among Pediatric Rheumatology Fellows: A Narrative Medicine Pilot Intervention. Healthcare (Basel). In press.
• Cabral DA, Bosman ES, McPhate N, Mann SK, Toor KK, Morishita KA, Luqmani R, Beresford MW, Bistolarides J, Campillo S, Charuvanij S, Cook K, Dancey P, de Guzman M, Deepak S, Eberhard B, Elder M, Gagne S, Harrison K, Huber A, Khan A, Kim S, Klein-Gitelman MS, Lee TC, Li SC, Martin N, McErlane F, Moorthy LN, Orjuela AH, Park J, Riley P, Rosenberg AM, Shenoi S, Sivaraman V, Sutnga S, Tanner T, Tarvin SE, Twilt M, Wagner-Weiner L, Yeung RSM, Brown KL; ARChiVe Investigators Network within the PedVas Initiative. Effective performance of the 2022 American College of Rheumatology/European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology classification criteria for Antineutrophil-Cytoplasmic-Antibody-Associated Vasculitis in Pediatric Patients: an ARChiVe Study. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2026 Apr 9. doi: 10.1002/art.70172. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 41958151.
• Hayward K, Grom A, Muscal E, Nigrovic PA, Rouster-Stevens KA, Ardalan K, Hiraki L, Moorthy LN; ACR/CARRA Mentoring Interest Group. Longitudinal program evaluation of an inter-institutional mentorship network for pediatric rheumatology using a quality improvement framework. Pediatr Rheumatol Online J. 2024 Jul 10;22(1):64. doi: 10.1186/s12969-024-00993-1. PMID: 38982530; PMCID: PMC11234764.
• Hovde AM, McFarland CAS, Garcia GM, Gallagher F, Gewanter H, Klein-Gitelman M, Moorthy LN. Multi-pronged approach to enhance education of children and adolescents with lupus, caregivers, and healthcare providers in New Jersey: Needs assessment, evaluation, and development of educational materials. Lupus. 2021 Jan;30(1):86-95. doi: 10.1177/0961203320969975. Epub 2020 Nov 19. PMID: 33210558.
• Moorthy LN, Baldino ME, Kurra V, Puwar D, Llanos A, Peterson MG, Hassett AL, Lehman TJ; International SMILEY© Collaborative Group. Relationship between health-related quality of life, disease activity and disease damage in a prospective international multicenter cohort of childhood onset systemic lupus erythematosus patients. Lupus. 2017 Mar;26(3):255-265. PMID: 27496901.