Graciela Alarcon, MD, MPH

Dr. Graciela Alarcón joined the faculty at UAB in 1981 after serving as a Research Fellow for approximately 18 months. She is now an Emeritus Professor and, although no longer residing in Birmingham, she remains actively involved in mentoring fellows and collaborating with the LFA, LCTC, and GLADEL as needed. Throughout her tenure at UAB—and previously at her alma mater, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Lima, Perú—she has been deeply engaged in the training of both clinical and research fellows.

Following her U.S. training (1968–1972), Dr. Alarcón established the first Rheumatology training program and the first Rheumatology Unit in Perú. Whether in Perú or in the United States, she consistently attended fellows’ clinics, joined them on rounds, and encouraged them to maintain an open, inquisitive mindset in their daily clinical and research activities. She is proud that more than 60% of the fellows who graduated from UAB between 1981 and the early 2000s—prior to her shift toward a greater focus on training clinical research fellows—published their clinical experiences under her mentorship and with her steadfast support. While not all pursued academic or research careers, she emphasized to each trainee that truly understanding the research process and the effort behind a published manuscript requires experiencing that process firsthand.

Although Dr. Alarcón mentored Junior Faculty and clinical research fellows throughout her career, it was only after 2002 that she secured dedicated funding to support fellows conducting lupus research. These fellows relied heavily on the LUMINA dataset, a multi‑ethnic lupus cohort created in collaboration with Drs. John Reveille (UT–Houston) and Luis Vilá (University of Puerto Rico, San Juan) in the early 1990s. Training these young physicians—while continuing to mentor Junior Faculty and clinical fellows—has remained one of the most rewarding and challenging aspects of her academic life as a rheumatologist.

Many trainees arrived with limited research experience, yet they excelled under her guidance. In addition to contributing to cohort data collection, they developed their own sub‑projects and carried them through to publication in respected rheumatology journals. The overall contributions of LUMINA were summarized in a special article published in Lupus in 2008, and its key findings were later featured in The Rheumatologist in Spring 2011.

Dr. Alarcón continues to collaborate with fellows she mentored in recent years, as well as with newer trainees conducting lupus research in their home countries, including México, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, and Perú. She has also assisted the LCTC in creating a national registry of lupus patients in the United States and Canada.  

In recent years, she has developed a close and productive partnership with GLADEL (Grupo Latinoamericano de Estudio de Lupus), supporting their work with a comprehensive regional database. With the support of PANLAR, this group produced the Latin American lupus treatment guidelines—an initiative in which Dr. Alarcón played a significant and impactful role.