Dr Suja Somanadhan is an Assistant Professor in Children’s Nursing at the UCD School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Systems. She is an emerging leader in the field of health care provision for rare diseases in Ireland with a number of publications and ongoing research programmes. She is spearheading rare disease research partnership model called ‘RAinDROP’ to shape the future of research studies that have been chosen with a life course perspective in mind. In her Fulbright Scholar award programme, she will examine the integrated care and services for the children, young people and their families living with Rare Diseases at the Center for Rare Disease Therapy at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. She will be using this analysis to compare and improve the provision of integrated care and support services for the person and their families living with Rare Diseases in Ireland and US. She will also explore the programme of work used to engage the Rare Disease patient community throughout the translational science process at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).