Welcome to PANLAR 2024

Dear colleagues,
Guests and friends,
Ladies and gentlemen,

In 2024 PANLAR celebrates 80 years since it was established as the world’s first regional league of rheumatology. Its founders recognized the need to form a union of those practicing the emerging specialty in the American continent to promote its development and build a united community based on two fundamental pillars, science and the heart.

Today, PANLAR is a vibrant community where all stakeholders in the specialty come together. Members of each of the 21 scientific societies that currently form part of the league, participate in knowledge dissemination events related to rheumatology trough activities held through the year in various academic formats, with their culmination being the annual congress.

The Pan-American congress, inaugurated in 1955, was designed from the need of having an event that brings together different expressions of knowledge and development in the specialty to reflect on patient care. Since 2019, we have successfully started the annual events, and in 2024, we will be holding the twenty-sixth congress.

Colombia, in the heart of America, once again hosts this event after 46 years, when it hosted the seventh edition in 1978. On this occasion, the country will be the host of this renewed Pan-American community composed of members of scientific societies, study groups and all ongoing Pan-American projects. The event this tame will take place in Barranquilla, the “golden gate of Colombia”, a pioneering city, the cradle of aviation and many other milestones in the development of our country. A city of immigrants located in the Caribbean, serving as aerial, maritime, river and communication hub that blends in each of its streets and people the melting pot of ethnicities and mixtures of our Latin America and the Caribbean region, expressed through its rich culture, cuisine and idiosyncratic. 

In Barranquilla, as its window to the world, we want the Pan-American community to live the experience of participating and being an active part in the development of a renewed PANLAR, of responding to the community’s call with ideas, contributions, projects and innovations that will continue to advance the specialty in the years ahead and manifest in a carefully designed congress experience. A fresh start that allows us to contemplate how we envision the future of PANLAR, how we want to collaborate with our patients for the improvement, development and dissemination of the specialty, and how we create value for the specialty through new technologies, patient care models and transdisciplinary approach to the field. In sum, how we continue to rethink and renew our league by addressing all current scientific and practical topics that help us update knowledge in the specialty, with the vision that it has a direct impact on our community and patient care as our core mission.

To do this, we will be surrounded by the unique charm and hospitality that can only be experienced in a land known for its wonderful people, sites and friendliness. As the saying goes “Barranquilla, those who don’t know you dream of you, and those who know you never forget you”.

We invite you to respond to this new call from the community united by science and compassion, to be part of PANLAR's 80 years, and to enjoy a few days that renew us and make us participants in a unique experience.

Welcome to the PANLAR of the future.
WE ARE ALL PANLAR!