For December’s CHEA Spotlight, we’re featuring one of our CHEA fellows: Dr. Elle Lett! Dr. Lett has been working with the Center since 2019. Elle is a statistician-epidemiologist and she is pursuing her MD at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a Master’s in Biostatistics from Duke University, a Master’s in Statistics from the Wharton School, and a PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Penn Medicine Palliative and Advanced Illness and Research (PAIR) Center, an associate fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, and a fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies. Wow, Elle! 

Elle’s work focuses on intersectionality and engaging transgender/gender minority and racial/ethnic minority communities. She is a physician-scholar-advocate with three active research arms: 1) intersectional approaches to health for ethnoracial minoritized subpopulations within the transgender community 2) structural racism and the health impacts of state-sanctioned violence and the carceral system on Black Americans and 3) prediction modeling and algorithmic fairness. Dr. Lett also seeks to make academia more accessible in minoritized communities. Ultimately, she wants to use health services research and social epidemiology to motivate policy changes that advance health equity in marginalized populations.

In September, she was featured in StatNews for a piece on “health equity tourists.” Elle’s work is prolific. It’s evident that she is making strides in the field of health equity, and will only continue to do so as her career advances. CHEA is so appreciative and proud of you, Elle!