Dr. Yazdany is Chief of the Division of Rheumatology at San Francisco General Hospital and the Alice Betts Endowed Professor of Medicine at UCSF. She received her undergraduate degree from Stanford, her MD from UCLA, her MPH from Harvard, and completed her internal medicine and rheumatology training at UCSF. She co-directs the UCSF Rheumatology Quality and Informatics Lab, an interdisciplinary group that uses health services research, informatics, and implementation science to inform national health care improvement initiatives.

Dr. Yazdany’s research has focused on improving the quality and safety of healthcare and in building national resources to advance the care of rheumatic diseases. Examples of her research leadership include building the quality measurement enterprise at the American College of Rheumatology (ACR), leading the development of nationally endorsed quality measures that are used throughout the U.S. healthcare system, collaborating with the ACR to develop the research infrastructure of the ACR’s RISE registry that includes data on >2 million patients with rheumatic disease, and most recently working with colleagues around the world to develop the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance registry.

She has made major scholarly contributions to our understanding of the epidemiology and outcomes of systemic lupus, with recent studies highlighting disparities in mortality and disease course among racial/ethnic minorities and the impact of the disease on health-related quality of life. She is widely regarded as the leading expert on quality and safety measurement in rheumatology, with recent papers identifying important gaps in care for people with rheumatic diseases and novel approaches to improve care.

In addition to serving as the principal investigator on multiple federal grants, she also leads a clinical research core for the UCSF rheumatology NIAMS P30. Lastly, she is increasingly focusing her time on mentorship with support through a NIAMS K24 award.