Lauren grew up in Missoula, attending Sentinel High School and volunteering at Community Medical Center, before she left for college in Houston, Texas, at Rice University. She did an internship with a family doctor in Germany while studying abroad, and decided on a career in medicine. She attended medical school at McGill University, then pediatric residency at the University of Vermont, where she won a grant to set up parenting support groups for Somali Bantu refugees. After her chief resident year, Lauren took a job at Seattle Children’s Hospital, where she worked as a pediatric hospitalist (caring for hospitalized children) and helped to educate resident doctors as an Associate Program Director for the residency program. She did research on quality improvement for bronchiolitis (a common viral infection in infants) and skin and soft tissue infections. After almost 5 years in Seattle, she and her family returned home to Missoula, where she is practices as a pediatric hospitalist and is the medical director at Community Children’s at Community Medical Center. They are very excited to be back and to be part of such a caring community of doctors and nurses in Community’s pediatric unit and Pediatric ICU. Lauren feels it is a privilege to care for families and children while they are hospitalized, and to be able to provide support at a very stressful time in their lives. She is also an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington, and teaches medical students, pediatric residents and family medicine residents at Community Children’s.

When she is not working, she enjoys playing ice hockey, gardening, hiking and going on adventures with her husband and two boys.