WHO celebrated 1977 as the World Rheumatism year and this resulted in a dialogue between ILAR and WHO that led to the idea of COPCORD, Community Oriented Program for Control of Rheumatic Diseases as a joint project between WHO and ILAR.
[1][2] COPCORD promotes low cost epidemiological research in developing countries[3] and has contributed to the understanding of disease burden in data poor regions[4] It has centers in 21 developing countries and has resulted in 102 peer reviewed international publications.