Dr. Kimberly Trotter is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Section of Rheumatology at The University of Chicago. She completed her medical degree at The University of Maryland School of Medicine and her internal medicine residency and rheumatology fellowship at The University of Chicago. After fellowship, she continued her career at The University of Chicago as a clinical rheumatologist with a special focus in systemic lupus erythematous (SLE). She serves as the co-director for The Lupus Clinic at The University of Chicago where she follows a large cohort of lupus patients. She also serves as a preceptor for the rheumatology fellows’ clinics and as an attending physician for the inpatient rheumatology team.
Dr. Trotter is passionate about lupus and improving the outcomes for her patients. She believes that clinical trials can help provide valuable information about this disease process. As co-director of the Lupus Clinic, Dr. Trotter is involved in several ongoing clinical trials. She is currently the primary investigator for two novel drug therapies for treating patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus. In addition, Dr. Trotter serves as the clinical director for the Lupus Clinical Trials Consortium Data Registry (LCTC), a multicenter, national longitudinal lupus database. She is also the co-investigator for the University of Chicago’s Lupus Clinic’s longitudinal clinical and biological sample repository. The information being collected will be used to determine predictors of outcomes in SLE, look at damage accrual, as well as obtain information regarding demographic, medication, and other trends which will provide insight into lupus disease activity.
Clinical trials can only be of assistance if a wide variety of patients enroll to participate. While lupus affects certain racial and ethnicminorities at higher rates with more severe symptoms and worse outcomes, those same racial and ethnic minorities are also less likely to enroll in clinical trials. Thus, the clinical trials may not be clinically applicable to this subset of lupus patients. To help bridge this disparity, Dr. Trotter is also working with the American College of Rheumatology Lupus Clinical Trials Training (LuCTT) program, a national program focused on increasing minority patient participation in lupus clinical trials.
In addition to her clinical duties, Dr. Trotter serves as a mentor to fellows and is a speaker for The American College of Rheumatology Fellows in Training Round Table discussion. She also serves as a mentor for undergraduate students in the University of Chicago Careers in Health Professions (UCHIP) program, and is the Director of the medical student Rheumatology Physical Diagnosis Day. On a personal level, Dr. Trotter enjoys spending time with her husband and their two children, exploring Chicago, and traveling.