Carter Serves as Acting Director of NIAMS

Dr. Robert Carter

Photo: NIAMS

Dr. Robert Carter has been named acting director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. He stepped into the role following the death of NIAMS director Dr. Stephen Katz last December. 
Planning to continue the late director’s legacy, Carter highlighted three principles that helped guide Katz: striving for fairness, working in a collegial way with other NIH institutes and centers and being a good steward of taxpayer funding.

Carter said he and all NIAMS staff will work hard to advance the institute’s mission as NIH leadership prepares to conduct a nationwide search to determine the next director.

Carter has served as deputy director for NIAMS since 2008. He led policy initiatives and projects such as the NIAMS Centers evaluation working group and clinical trials working group. 

He leads the Accelerating Medicines Partnership in Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus, a public-private partnership between government, industry, advocacy organizations and academic centers that is focusing on tissues with active disease from patients. Carter also led the development of the Back Pain Consortium, part of NIH’s HEAL Initiative.

Previously, he was at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he was a professor of medicine and director of the division of clinical immunology and rheumatology. He also worked as a staff physician at Birmingham Veterans Affairs Medical Center.—Greg Lavine