Patricia Chu, MD
I am a fourth-year Combined Adult and Pediatric Endocrinology Fellow at Penn Medicine/Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and am currently in the Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology (MSCE) program at the University of Pennsylvania. I completed my bachelor’s degree at the University of Chicago and then received my medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine. Following medical school, I went to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, TN for combined internal medicine-pediatrics residency.
My interest in working with adolescents and young adults first started in college where I mentored teenagers with sickle cell disease. These teens taught me about the challenges of growing up with chronic diseases (particularly during adolescence) and inspired me to complete med-peds training so that I could continue working with adolescents and young adults with chronic illness. In residency, I loved thinking through hormonal and metabolic pathways in endocrinology clinic and the longitudinal relationships formed between endocrinologists and their patients. In my adult clinics, I saw how a gap in care and lack of access to novel diabetes therapies/technology during the transition period between pediatric to adult healthcare could have a life-long impact on a patient’s health and quality of life later in adulthood. These experiences motivated me to do combined adult and pediatric endocrinology fellowship and sparked my research interest in improving long-term outcomes in adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with type 2 diabetes.
Studying which treatments are most effective in AYAs with Type 2 Diabetes through a clinical trial is frequently not feasible due to cost and limitation in resources for long term follow up. Understanding these constraints, I wanted to get more training in epidemiological research methods, observational research design and use of large databases. I am currently in a masters program studying clinical epidemiology program with funding support from the Pharmacoepidemiology T32.
My fellowship research project is focused on evaluating the real-world effectiveness and utilization of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists in adolescents and young adults with Type 2 diabetes using a multi-center electronic health records database.
I feel so fortunate to have had excellent mentors at all stages of my training- from college through fellowship. Dr. Christianne Roumie was my research mentor in residency who taught me about navigating a med-peds career and encouraged me to follow my interests in epidemiology. In fellowship, Drs. Andi Kelly & Sean Hennessy have been indispensable as research mentors and helping me grow during fellowship.