Problems in access to benefits and services among persons with rheumatoid arthritis.

This exploratory survey of 100 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) was conducted (1) to learn about the types and frequencies of disability law-related problems encountered as a result of having RA, and (2) to assess the respective relationships between the number of disability law-related problems reported and the patients' sociodemographic and RA disease characteristics. The underlying concern of health care and legal professionals was that the often protracted exclusionary RA diagnostic process and the episodic nature of RA could make it more difficult to establish a precise clinical diagnosis and level of disability. Therefore, patients with RA would encounter difficulties in accessing entitlements and benefits provided under disability laws. The findings from this survey were used to develop a legal manual to empower health care professionals and people with arthritis to take litigative, legislative, social action, and self-help measures to redress the disability-law related problems.

Assessment of the reliability and validity of the arthritis impact measurement scales for children with juvenile arthritis.

There are few multidimensional measures of functional status in children, and none have been developed for children with juvenile arthritis (JA). This report describes an attempt to apply selected components of the Arthritis Impact Measurement Scales (AIMS), which were developed and validated for adults, to a sample of children with active JA (n = 60) or inactive JA (n = 17). Our results suggest that the Pain scale and the Physical Activity scale are the most reliable measures for children with JA; the correlations of the Pain scale, Physical Activity scale, and Dexterity scale results with the clinical measures of JA diagnostic category and joint count support the convergent validity of these scales for the active JA group; and the AIMS revised Physical Disability dimension and the Pain dimension, used to predict the children's classification in the active or inactive JA group, evidence discriminant validity. Additional studies of children with a wider range of impairments are needed to further assess the usefulness of the AIMS for children with JA.