Spotlight

Dr. Lauren Oshman

Biography:

Dr. Lauren Oshman is a family physician and Clinical Associate Professor in the University of Michigan Department of Family Medicine. She sees patients at the Chelsea Health Center and delivers babies at U-M’s Von Voightlander Women’s Hospital. She is a Diplomate of the American Board of Obesity Medicine, and the Program Director of the Michigan Collaborative for Type 2 Diabetes (www.mct2d.org), a collaborative quality initiative established to accelerate a new way forward, through collaboration, innovation, and investment in quality, evidence based care for type 2 diabetes. Dr. Oshman graduated from Baylor College of Medicine in 2003 and completed residency training at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, NY. She also earned her MPH from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Prior to joining U-M in 2020, she practiced for five years in Concord, NH and then as residency faculty and Vice-Chair for Quality at NorthShore University Health System in Chicago, IL.

What are you currently working on?

Related to pediatric obesity, I’m currently working on a qualitative study understanding barriers for caregivers to participate in intensive health behavior and lifestyle treatment (IHBLT).

What led you to pursue a career in childhood obesity?

As a family physician I have the honor of taking care of families, from pre-conception through delivery and growth of children to adulthood. I see how interconnected family health habits are and how important it is to provide whole-family treatment.

What do you like most about your job, or what do you find most exciting about it?

I love collaborating across disciplines and doing work that elevated the voice of people in our communities. I find it most exciting when research can center the voice of those most marginalized in our health care system and lead to real change.

The Momentum Center is a cross-disciplinary research center. How have you drawn on your other experiences to do this kind of research?

A recent research project brought together researchers trained in mixed methods, sociology, public health and anti-racist methodology and collaborated with a community participatory council. The different voices on our team allowed for greater depth of reflection and interrogation of some of the biases we brought to the work in a highly positive way.

If you had unlimited time and resources to explore a research question, what would you want to study?

I find that having limited time and resources is actually a great constraint to create creative, boundary-pushing work. With unlimited resources I would be able to more intensively engage and compensate community members to be part of all of my research activities!

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