Dr. Donald Thomas is a board-certified Rheumatologist and is in private practice at Arthritis and Pain Associates of Prince George’s County in Greenbelt, Maryland. He is a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Maryland and enjoys teaching medical students and rheumatology fellows at USU and the adjacent Walter Reed National Medical Center. Dr. Thomas received his medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine in 1989. He completed his Internal Medicine residency at Brooke Army Medical Center and his Rheumatology fellowship at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 1995. He is passionate about empowering patients to do well and authored the highly-rated lupus education book, The Lupus Encyclopedia: A Comprehensive Guide for Patients and Health Care Providers from The Johns Hopkins University Press. He runs a lupus patient education blog, www.lupusencyclopedia.com, regularly posts educational topics on Twitter (X handle is @lupuscyclopedia), and runs a lupus patient education Facebook page (www.facebook.com/LupusEncyclopedia) where he has over 31,000 followers worldwide. Dr. Thomas is a Fellow member of the American Board of College of Physicians and the American College of Rheumatology. He is a Chair Emeritus of the Medical and Scientific Advisory Board of the Lupus Foundation (DC/MD/VA) chapter from whom he received the Lupus Hero Award in 2016. He was a member of the Medical Advisory Council of The Arthritis Foundation Mid-Atlantic Chapter, was President of the Rheumatism Society of the District of Columbia 2016-2017, and is a previous Chair of the National Board of Directors of the Sjogren’s Foundation. He also volunteers for the American College of Rheumatology, serving on their Committee on Rheumatologic Care, striving to improve rheumatologic patient care nationwide.