Onyekwere E. Akwari Assistant Professor of Surgery
Assistant Professor in Population Health Sciences
DUMC 3512, Durham, NC 27710
Office: 919-668-3424
Email: lisa.mcelroy@duke.edu
Administrative contact: charlene.newsome@duke.edu
Overview
Lisa M. McElroy, MD, MS, FACS (she/her) is an abdominal transplant surgeon with a health services research lab focused on understanding how complex health care processes and large multidisciplinary teams affect outcomes of high cost, high acuity patients. Dr. McElroy has a master's degree in health services and outcomes research methodology with supplemental training in health disparities research methods, engineering methods for healthcare system and process assessment, organizational behavior theory and change management, and implementation science.
She is currently involved in several efforts that build on this concept and employ an approach to health equity research that accounts for center and organizational-level characteristics when examining differences in care based on social determinants of health.
Advanced Training
Surgical residents and medical students are encouraged to inquire about research opportunities.
Lab Members and Collaborators
Wendy Webster, MA, MBA, FACHE
Director of Clinical Operations and Healthcare Analytics
Ursula Rogers
Senior Informaticist
Roland A. Matsouaka, PhD
Assistant Professor of Biostatics & Bioinformatics
Tyler Schappe, MS
Biostatistician
Hamed Zaribafzadeh
Biostatistician
Andrew Olson, MPP
Associate Director, Policy Strategy and Solutions for Health Data Science
Faculty Collaborators
Ricardo Henao, PhD
Associate Professor of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics
Sam Berchuck, PhD
Assistant Professor of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics
Juan Marcos Gonzalez, PhD
Associate Professor in Population Health Sciences
Hayden Bosworth, PhD
Professor in Population Health Sciences
Jackie Henson, MD
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Goni Katz Greenberg, MD
Assistant Professor of Medicine
CHART Collaborators
The McElroy Research Lab collaborates with physicians and scientists outside of Duke who are experts in the fields of organ transplantation, epidemiology, medical ethics, and more. To learn more about our collaborators, visit the Consortium for the Holistic Assessment of Risk in Transplant (CHART) website.
Additional Collaborators
The McElroy Lab also collaborates with the Laboratory for Transformative Administration (LTA), which utilizes health system data to address operational challenges that affect clinical care and have broader enterprise-wide impact, and the CTSI Social Informatics Program, which aims to help individuals better understand how upstream social and environmental factors impact health.
Lab Mentees
The lab places a priority on offering mentorships to medical students, residents, and graduate students, and we encourage those who are interested to inquire about research opportunities. A list of past and current mentees is below.
Faculty Mentees
Jashalynn German, MD
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Allison Martin, MD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Surgery
Graduate Student Mentees
Tina Cheng*
Daniel Guidot, MD, MPH
Fellow, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
Adina Jain
Faith Mendoza
Carl Mhina*
Xuyang Xia
Resident Mentee
Norine Chan*
Resident, Duke General Surgery
Student Mentees
Kathleen Chang*
Olivia Fehrman*
Mia Grayson*
Moronke Ogundolie
*Current mentee
Select Media
Select Media
- Pullen L. CHARTing the path forward: Improving health equity in transplant. Am J Transplant. 2023 Jun;23(6):697-699. doi: 10.1016/j.ajt.2023.04.023. Epub 2023 Apr 28.
- No Time to Spare: The push to erase racial bias in the organ transplant system https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/story/organ-transplant-inequities
- Q&A: Dinushika Mohottige, MD and Lisa McElroy, MD on ADPKD Health Inequities MedPage Today, March 1 2023; https://www.medpagetoday.com/resource-centers/autosomal-dominant-polycy…
- “Utilizing Social Determinants of Health Data to Address Racial Disparities in Kidney Transplantation” ASN Kidney News, July 2022; https://www.kidneynews.org/view/journals/kidney-news/14/7/article-p21_8…
- “Race Is Often Used as Medical Shorthand for How Bodies Work. Some Doctors Want to Change That” June 13, 2022 Kaiser Health News; https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/race-medical-shorthand-kidney-ca…
- “My Inspiration for Being a Transplant Surgeon” Donate life North Carolina Blog, August 2021; https://www.donatelifenc.org/blog/meet-dr-lisa-mcelroy-transplant-surge…
- “Living Kidney Donation Helps Black Patients Get Transplanted Faster” Duke Health Blog, September 2021; https://www.dukehealth.org/blog/living-kidney-donations-help-black-peop…
- “Striving for Equity in Transplant” The AJT Report| Volume 20, ISSUE 9, P2293-2294, September 2020
News
Understanding and Fixing Inequities in Palliative Care and Organ Transplant
The Dean's Distinguished Research Series concluded on April 20 with lectures from Kimberly Johnson, MD, professor of medicine and a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, and Lisa McElroy, MD, MS, assistant professor of su
Duke Surgery Celebrates the Founding of the Akwari Society and Onyekwere E. Akwari Professorship in Surgery
School of Medicine Establishes Onyekwere E. Akwari Endowed Professorship; Lisa McElroy Named Inaugural Recipient
View a full list of Dr. McElroy's funded projects and publications on her faculty profile.
Projects, Grants, and Awards
Key Projects Underway
- Harmonization of multicenter electronic health record data for transplant research
- Modeling feasibility of opt out kidney transplant referral system
- Transplant center screening programs for health-related social needs
- Multidimensional data visualization for transplant selection committee decision support
- Financial strain prediction and reduction in transplant candidates and recipients
- Living donor/candidate dyad-based interventions to improve access to living donor kidney and liver transplant
Recent Grants and Awards
2023 NIH U54MD012530, REACH Equity Research Scholar Award
2023 1R01DK137110-01 National Institutes of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
2023 Examining the Benefit of LCP Tacrolimus in Patients with Social Deprivation (Sponsored by Veloxis)
2022 1K08MD017632-01 National Institutes of Minority Health and Health Disparities
2022 American Surgical Association Foundation Research Award
2021 RWJF Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program
Contact Us
Lisa McElroy, MD, MS, FACS (She/Her)
Assistant Professor of Surgery and Population Health Sciences
Inaugural Onyekwere E. Akwari Endowed Assistant Professor in Surgery
Duke University School of Medicine
DUMC 3512, Durham, NC 27710
Office 919-668-3424
Email: lisa.mcelroy@duke.edu
Administrative contact: charlene.newsome@duke.edu