Elle Lett is a Black, transgender woman; a statistician-epidemiologist; and a physician-in-training at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She applies the theories and principles of Black Feminism to understanding the health impacts of systemic racism, transphobia, and other forms of discrimination on oppressed groups in the United States. 

Lett is a senior fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies, an independent nonprofit research organization led by transgender academics and focusing on the scholarship of social, political and cultural experiences of transgender people. Lett’s work looks at intersectional approaches to transgender health and the health impacts of state-sanctioned violence and other forms of systemic racism. Her most recent research examines the experiences of diverse transgender youth accessing gender-affirming medical care; public health and health equity; and diversity and inclusion in the medical field.  

As part of her postdoctoral fellowship at the Boston Children’s Hospital Computational Health Informatics Program, she is researching algorithmic fairness in clinical prediction models and mitigating systems of inequity in health services.

Lett holds a bachelor’s degree in molecular and cellular biology from Harvard College, master’s degrees in biostatistics from Duke University and statistics from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and a Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.

Courtesy of Hannah Yoon

Pronouns: she/her

Expertise: Health inequities, transgender health, gender-affirming medical care, diversity and inclusion in the medical field, health impacts of incarceration, state-sanctioned violence and other forms of systemic racism.

Location: Boston, Mass.

Contact form: ellelett.com/contact_form

Twitter: @ElleLettMDPhD

Heard on Gladstone Institutes: “Out in Science 2022: Queer Futurism in STEM”: