UVA Health to launch national program targeting connective tissue disorders

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - UVA Health is launching a new, national program that will target connective tissue disorders, a development that doctors say is sorely needed.

Thanks in part to a $3 million donation, the program is slated to open in late 2025 or early 2026 in Fontaine Research Park.

The focus is on Ehlers-Danlos syndromes and other hypermobility disorders, which cause pain and other medical issues throughout the body, and, if left untreated, can be life-threatening.

Doctor Ina Stephens, the UVA Health pediatrician who will continue to lead Ehlers-Danlos care for children, says these syndromes are difficult to diagnose in isolation, and that having one centralized location here in Charlottesville is crucial.

“Having a center where physicians know that if they start seeing some of these underlying, maybe sub-specialty issues, and they can say, well I think it may be this, let’s have them diagnosed, let’s have them seen in the center, can be really life changing,” Stephens said.

Doctor Dacre Knight, medical director of the Ehlers-Danlos syndrome clinic at Mayo Clinic, will join UVA Health in the fall to lead care for adult patients. He says he hopes to expand on this work further in the future.

“We’re happy to get this up and started and help as many patients as we can,” Knight said. “There’s a lot of work we have to do to get this going.”

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