Join us as we share the hope with Dr. Keila Lopez.
Dr. Keila N. Lopez, a native of Chicago, is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the Section of Pediatric Cardiology at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine. She completed her medical school at Rush Medical College in Chicago, Illinois, and then completed her residency in pediatrics at the University of Chicago. She subsequently completed the Commonwealth Fund Fellowship at Harvard School of Public Health in Minority Health Policy and Healthcare Management in Boston, Massachusetts. She completed her medical training by completing a fellowship in pediatric cardiology with a focus on cardiovascular imaging at Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, TX where she now resides.
Dr. Lopez’s research portfolio reflects a longstanding commitment to addressing health disparities and public health initiatives. She has presented nationally on health disparities, leading teams to conduct multidisciplinary work using large databases and GIS mapping to better understand the connection between health, socioeconomic status, neighborhood level factors and access to quality healthcare. She has participated in several community initiatives to help underserved populations, and more recently was the only Latina and pediatrician appointed to Houston Mayor Turner’s COVID-19 Health Equity Response
Task Force.
Given her public health and health policy background, she serves as an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Rice University and serves as a co-investigator for the Texas Children’s Policy and Advocacy Center. She is the creator and Director of the pediatric cardiology Transition Program, screening knowledge and transition skill gaps for youth with congenital heart disease to improve their ultimate transfer to adult care. She has an NIH early career award used to create a mobile application that is a “portable transition program” to reduce health disparities during the transition process in patients with congenital heart disease and includes a transfer summary and activation tool. This project is now in a pilot testing phase to determine its acceptability, feasibility, and usability.
Dr. Lopez seeks to incorporate cardiology, public health, and minority health policy in order to develop research initiatives that directly inform health policy and improve the health care of minorities and underserved populations. She hopes to identify strategies to enhance and prolong the lives of those with CHD through surveillance, population-based research, education, health promotion, advocacy, and policy development.