May 26, 2020

Chatham named 2020 Dean's Excellence Award Winner in Service

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Chatham Walter WinnWinn Chatham, M.D., is the senior faculty winner of the 2020 Dean’s Excellence Award in Service. Chatham is a professor in the Division of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology.

Chatham is the founder and director of the UAB Lupus Clinic, where he provides expert care to over 550 lupus patients. His service and success as a clinical trialist is evidenced by over 70 publications and in the improved lives of innumerable patients with lupus. Within the Division, Chatham serves as associate division director for Clinical Services, where he provides outstanding leadership in our patient care.

Chatham has been recognized nine times by his peers in the Department of Medicine with the Cobbs-Rutsky Award for outstanding clinical care. He is also dedicated to serving the community through patient education. He organizes an Annual Patient Appreciation and Empowerment Summit for the Mid-South Chapter Lupus Foundation of America, and he participates (with his patients) in the yearly Walk to End Lupus event.

His proven leadership reaches to the national level, where he has served on several influential American College of Rheumatology committees, as well as the Rheumatology Section of the American College of Physicians’ Medical Knowledge Self-Assessment Program committee. Chatham is also the clinical director of the Lupus Clinical Trials Consortium.

“His service and dedication to the UAB Health System, the ACR, local organizations, and his patients make him the hardest working and very best all-around rheumatologist I have ever known,” said fellow UAB rheumatologist Dr. Laura Hughes.

Chatham earned his medical degree from Vanderbilt University and completed his residency at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He went on to complete a fellowship here at UAB. His research program is focused on the biology of TNF family receptors and their ligands as these relate to disease expression in lupus and other inflammatory/autoimmune disorders. Additional collaborative studies examine the biology of type-1 interferons and interferon-alpha blocking reagents on disease activity in systemic lupus and macrophage activation disorders.