Lauren Gehler Fiechtner, MD

Lauren Fiechtner, MD, MPH is the Division Chief of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition at Mass General Brigham for Children and an Associate Professor of Pediatrics a Harvard Medical School. She is a board-certified pediatrician, pediatric gastroenterologist and nutrition physician, a clinical epidemiologist, obesity and food insecurity researcher. She is the medical director of the Center for Feeding and Nutrition at Mass General Brigham for Children a large multi-disciplinary clinical team which seeks to provide family centered care to improve children’s growth, feeding and nutrition. She also serves as the Senior Health and Research Advisor at the Greater Boston Food Bank leading their statewide survey on food access and their food is medicine research. Dr. Fiechtner has helped lead several randomized controlled trials to treat childhood obesity in clinic and community settings and through that work developed one of only six family healthy weight programs recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and American Academy of Pediatrics. In addition, her work with the Greater Boston Food Bank has informed programmatic and policy work to improve food and nutrition equity in the Commonwealth. 

She is a 2009 graduate of Boston University School of Medicine and a member of Alpha Omega Alpha and the Gold Humanism Honor Society. She completed her internship and residency in the Boston Combined Residency Program in Pediatrics at both Boston Medical Center and Boston Children's Hospital. She also completed a gastroenterology and nutrition fellowship at Boston Children's Hospital. She obtained her Master's in Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health.

As an intern she was awarded the Outstanding Resident Teaching award from Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She was also awarded the Michael Osband, MD, Memorial award during residency which is given to the resident which embodies Dr. Osband's work through compassion, dedication and enthusiasm and has positively impacted the lives of their colleagues, patients and families.

Dr. Fiechtner's interests include preventing childhood obesity in the community and improving care for patients with oral aversion and feeding difficulties. She has presented her work at the Pediatric Academic Societies, the Obesity Society and the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition annual meetings. Her work has been published in the American Journal of Public Health, Childhood Obesity, Preventive Medicine and Journal of National Medical Association.