Dr. Carrie Hersh Shares Her Vision as New President-Elect of Consortium of MS Centers

In late May, the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers (CMSC) announced that Cleveland Clinic neurologist Carrie M. Hersh, DO, MSc, was elected as its incoming president-elect.

The election, held among CMSC members and membership organizations, places Dr. Hersh into leadership roles with the organization of multiple sclerosis (MS) healthcare professionals for the next four years. These start with a one-year term (which began July 1, 2025) as president-elect, to be followed by a two-year term as president and then one year as immediate past president.

When she steps into the presidency after a year of preparation as president-elect, Dr. Hersh’s responsibilities will include leading meetings of the CMSC executive committee and board of governors and working closely with the CMSC’s CEO and its various committees, task forces and working groups to implement the organization’s strategies and activities and collectively steer its vision.

Consult QD caught up with Dr. Hersh — an MS specialist with Cleveland Clinic Nevada and Cleveland Clinic’s Mellen Center for MS Treatment and Research — to get her thoughts on her new roles with the CMSC and the MS field in general. The following Q&A has been edited for length and style.

What are your priorities for the CMSC?

Dr. Hersh: One priority is to continue to elevate the unique contributions of each member of the MS care team and strengthen the multidisciplinary collaboration among team members. This stems from the vision that the CMSC’s founder, June Halper, had when she developed this organization. I also plan to work closely with our interim CEO, Kathleen Costello, CRNP, MSCN, to facilitate comprehensive board development and strategic planning to position the CMSC for sustained growth and impactful leadership into the future.

I'm also particularly focused on advancing real-world evidence generation in a more systematic and coordinated way, looking deeply at impact and outcomes to help us better understand how treatments perform across all populations and in real-life settings. This has been a research interest of mine that I hope to further support for the enhancement of MS care and research more broadly.

I see an opportunity to ensure that our research, education and clinical programs reflect the needs and experiences of all people living with MS. I’d also like to continue increasing support of young investigators and promote their involvement in evidence generation. Together, these two priorities can bring fresh perspectives and more innovative ideas that ultimately improve care for all people with MS.

Additionally, I want to promote efforts that support workforce well-being, mentorship and leadership development. The goal is to ensure that the MS care community stays engaged and resilient and prepared for what’s ahead because these are challenging times in healthcare. We want to make sure we’re supporting the CMSC membership and prioritizing ways to reduce and prevent burnout.

Finally, there has been growing interest in the CMSC to further build out education, resources and advocacy around other diseases related to MS, such as neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder, myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibody-associated disease and other autoimmune-mediated CNS conditions. This is something I would like to support.

What do you see as leading challenges in MS care and research today?

Dr. Hersh: One of the biggest challenges continues to be access, both to expert multidisciplinary care and to timely management, particularly in rural areas and among populations with disproportionate barriers to care. While telehealth has helped expand access — and we’ve been doing a lot of work in this realm at Cleveland Clinic’s Mellen Center for MS, under the leadership of Marisa McGinley, DO —there’s still more we can do to make sure telehealth is available to all and used effectively. Access to disease-modifying therapies is another area of real concern; patients often face delays in starting these therapies because of insurance denials or insurance requirements that don’t reflect the clinical realities of MS. And these barriers don’t just impact patients: They also contribute to growing frustration and burnout among MS providers whose mission is to deliver high-quality care in an increasingly complex and constrained system. I’m hopeful the CMSC can further address burnout by using the data we’re already collecting from MS providers to identify new ways to help tackle this problem.

Another leading challenge is the need to better understand the heterogeneity of treatment response across various MS populations. I hope to see the CMSC lobby for and elevate studies that investigate these outcomes, including co-sponsorship of efforts with other organizations and key stakeholders. This type of research will ultimately help us guide more personalized, data-driven care for our patients.

I’d also mention the challenge of the increasing complexity of treatment decisions. A prime example is in the aging MS patient population, which is growing as more people are living longer with MS. We need to better understand how to approach disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) in older individuals with MS, such as if and when to safely de-escalate or discontinue DMTs, and how to safely do so. Fortunately, clinical trial and observational data on this topic are expanding, but we need to better synthesize and interpret that information so clinicians can apply it with confidence.

What do you see as leading opportunities in MS at this time?

Dr. Hersh: Some opportunities are the flip sides of the challenges. One obstacle beyond what I noted above is the shift toward recognizing MS as a spectrum of disease and effectively managing it as such. That requires some changes in approach, which can be difficult, but it represents a real opportunity as well.

Our patients with MS are marked by a range of disease courses, symptoms and responses to treatment, yet our care systems often are built for standardized approaches, relying on population-level data from clinical trials reporting average treatment effects. So how do we know whether the average effect is going to help the individual sitting in front of us? The opportunity here lies in leveraging emerging biomarkers, precision medicine and digital tools to tailor treatment and monitor disease activity more closely, with the ultimate goal of improving outcomes and quality of life for those living with MS.

Patient and disease heterogeneity means that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work anymore, which is why expanding evidence from real-world observational studies represents such a big opportunity. By systematically collecting and analyzing data from everyday clinical practice, we may better understand what works for whom in which contexts, and then use that understanding to guide more personalized, data-driven care.

Additionally, I think there’s real momentum around technology in the MS space. We’re seeing advances in digital health tools. We’re seeing advances in data sharing and emerging therapies and therapeutic approaches that offer new hope, especially for patients with progressive MS, such as in the recent HERCULES clinical trial. Remote monitoring via wearables can help us track meaningful outcomes outside the clinic, providing a glimpse into patients’ daily function. In various ways, our growing use of technology allows us to better understand how our patients are responding to therapies outside of traditional outcome metrics used in clinical trials. This will help provide more personalized and effective treatment across all our disease populations.

How do you hope to collaborate with other MS groups?

Dr. Hersh: Collaboration among MS groups and societies is critical today because of the complex challenges we face in research and clinical care. No single organization can address them alone. By working together, we can continue to share data, align research priorities, standardize best practices and amplify our collective voice to improve patient care and policy. This collaboration is essential not only among the providers in these organizations but also with the patients we serve and their care partners.

The CMSC already works very closely with the National MS Society, and there’s certainly been collaboration with the Multiple Sclerosis Association of America. I hope to continue to strengthen those ties. I also aim to foster stronger partnerships with international groups as well [CMSC membership includes the U.S. and Canada] through participation in evidence and consensus generation, education and involvement in our conferences.

What do you think distinguishes the CMSC from other MS groups?

Dr. Hersh: The most distinctive aspect of the CMSC is the multidisciplinary nature of its membership, its leadership and its activities. Our board of governors includes not just neurologists but rehabilitation experts, therapists, nurses, pharmacists, psychologists, neuropsychologists, research coordinators, business executives and more. This range of voices at the table — which reflects the CMSC membership more broadly — allows us to think outside the box and bring perspectives to the table that would never occur to me as a neurologist.

This breadth of voices makes the CMSC a vibrant, collaborative community that’s well equipped to advance all aspects of MS care and research in a truly comprehensive way. It’s a place where innovation meets real-world practice and where members can connect to really drive meaningful change for people living with MS.