Musculoskeletal Health (Formerly Physical Therapy)

Dr. Brian Feldman is Professor of Pediatrics, the Institute of Medicine, and the Institute of Health Policy Management & Evaluation at the University of Toronto. He is Division Head of Rheumatology at The Hospital for Sick Children. Dr. Feldman graduated from the University of Western Ontario (MD, 1985) and he did further graduate training in clinical epidemiology at the University of Toronto (MSc, 1994). He interned at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto and went on to do a core pediatric residency at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. Dr. Feldman returned to Toronto to be an associate chief resident at The Hospital for Sick Children. He stayed on there to complete a fellowship in pediatric rheumatology.

Dr. Feldman’s main focus has been in clinical research in the field of childhood rheumatic disease. Recognizing the challenges involved in the study of rare disease Dr. Feldman has worked to improve the tools available to assist in this research. He has worked at developing and refining outcome measurement tools for use in clinical trials and in outcome studies. He has developed innovative methodologies for the study of new therapies (e.g. the Randomized Placebo Phase Design) and refined and tested powerful existing methods (e.g. Bayesian meta-analysis of n-of-1 randomized trials). Dr. Feldman has made contributions to the understanding of the prognosis and treatment of juvenile dermatomyositis, the cost-effective prevention of arthropathy in severe hemophilia, the course and outcome of systemic-onset juvenile idiopathic arthritis and juvenile SLE, and the role of fitness and exercise in childhood chronic diseases including arthritis and fibromyalgia.

Dr. Feldman’s research, by its nature, is collaborative. As such he is a member of the Pediatric Rheumatology Collaborative Study Group, the Canadian Alliance of Pediatric Rheumatology Investigators, the International Myositis Assessment Criteria study group, and other collaborative organizations. He was one of the founding members of the Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA), and was the head of the protocol evaluation subcommittee and chair of the Juvenile Dermatomyositis subcommittee. Dr. Feldman is also a former member of the Steering Committee, member Physical Therapy Expert Working Group, and former Outcome Measures Expert Working Group of the International Prophylaxis Study Group.