Andrea Knight, MD, MSCE

Dr. Andrea Knight is a pediatric rheumatologist at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and assistant professor at the University of Toronto, Canada. She obtained her medical degree from the Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons in New York. She then completed her pediatric residency and pediatric rheumatology fellowship at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and a Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania. She recently returned to her home city of Toronto, to join the lupus care team at SickKids and continue her clinical research at the SickKids Research Institute. She is the current Vice-Chair of the Lupus Section for the Childhood Arthritis & Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA), and a member of the Medical-Scientific Advisory Committee for the Lupus Foundation of America. She also co-leads a research workgroup for the Mental Health Section of CARRA.

Dr. Knight’s research seeks to improve comprehensive care and overall outcomes for children with childhood-onset systemic lupus erythematosus (cSLE). In 2015, she founded and continues to lead a robust Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA) Workgroup focused on mental health in cSLE and other pediatric rheumatic diseases. She has led several collaborative projects to characterize psychiatric comorbidity in cSLE, the psychosocial burden on patients and families, and to investigate strategies to improve mental health intervention. She has multiple funded investigator initiated clinical and translational research projects studying the impact of cSLE on cognitive and mental health via clinical assessments as well as novel neuroimaging techniques. This body of work was recently recognized for significantly advancing SLE research by Dr. Knight’s receipt of the 2020 Edmund L Dubois Memorial Lectureship from the Rheumatology Research Foundation. 

As a co-principal investigator on an active award from the CDC, she has an integral role in the expansion, enhancement and analysis of the CARRA SLE registry, which will characterize longitudinal outcomes in cSLE. Dr. Knight has also contributed to the SLE research community through several leadership and committee roles. As the elected Vice-Chair for the CARRA SLE Committee, (and recently elected SLE Chair to start in July 2021), she has overseen the direction of CARRA lupus research, supporting and guiding research activities for four working groups, fostering collaboration among junior and senior investigators, as well as external collaboration between CARRA, patient foundations, and industry partners. Furthermore, her expertise in cSLE has led to multiple speaking invitations for scientific, clinical and lay audiences, locally, nationally and internationally, serving to educate clinicians, researchers, patients and families about lupus in children.