Description of Clinical Expertise

Chronic Kidney Disease, Hypertension, Shared-decision making

Description of Research Expertise

Sarah Schrauben, MD, MSCE is Assistant Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology in the Division of Renal, Electrolyte, and Hypertension, and Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics at the Perelman School of Medicine and a Senior Scholar in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the impact of health behaviors and modifiable risk factors in the development and management of chronic kidney disease (CKD) and its complications, as well as addressing implementation gaps of evidence-based care in CKD. She has contributed to the growing evidence base that seeks to prioritize behavior recommendations for management of CKD as well as assessing barriers to healthy behavior engagement. She has conducted studies that have identified high levels of substandard health behavior engagement among adults with CKD and phenotypes of behavior engagement that associate with clinical outcomes in this population. Her work also has assessed for real-time barriers to health behaviors by interviewing patients with CKD and developing a patient-centered behavioral intervention that leverages mobile health technology to increase engagement in healthy behaviors. She is currently conducting feasibility testing of the intervention in a clinical trial. Dr. Schrauben’s research aims to address implementation gaps in evidence-based CKD care. She is currently expanding her investigations in disease management by exploring the impact of functional status among those with CKD and multi-morbidity. Her future work aims to guide the development of innovative strategies to improve clinical and patient-reported outcomes in CKD.