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Ronald Lubelchek, MD is a board-certified infectious disease specialist in Chicago, Illinois. His overall professional aim and goal of his research has been to improve the access and quality of care for people living with HIV (PLWH), particularly PLWH in the Chicago area. He previously served as the Medical Director of the Ruth M. Rothstein CORE Center, Cook County’s ambulatory HIV clinic and one of the largest HIV clinics in the country – which cares for over 5000 PLWH. He also works as an attending physician in the division of Infectious Diseases at John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, and holds a faculty appointment as an assistant professor in the department of internal medicine at Rush University Medical Center.
Much of his past research efforts have focused on improving implementation of HIV testing programs in urban, safety-net medical systems. He has also researched ways in which health information technology can improve HIV care, receiving a National Institutes of Health CFAR administrative supplement to study ways in which real time electronic medical record prompts can improve engagement in HIV care. He led his site’s effort to assess HIV transmission clustering in the region, demonstrating racial/ethnic, but not geographic clustering of recently diagnosed HIV patients in Chicago.
Dr. Lubelchek has more recently moved on to become the medical director of tuberculosis care for the Cook County Department of Public Health. In this this capacity, he oversees the clinical care of all TB patients in suburban Cook County.
During the COVID pandemic, he cared for COVID patients both in the intensive care setting as well as in the outpatient setting, while also participating as a co-investigator in several COVID treatment and vaccination clinical trials.
Dr. Lubelchek earned his BA from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and received his MD from the University of Illinois School of Medicine in Rockford, Illinois. He then completed his Internal Medicine Residency at Barnes Jewish Hospital/Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, as well as his Infectious Diseases Fellowship at Rush University/Cook County Hospital in Chicago, Illinois.
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