Lauren Richey, MD, MPH, FIDSA, Professor, ID Center Director

Dr. Richey is a board-certified Infectious Diseases physician with over ten years of experience in HIV primary care and clinical research. After receiving her Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she went on to receive a Master in Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University and her medical degree from Thomas Jefferson University. She completed her residency training in internal medicine and her fellowship in infectious diseases at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans.  During her fellowship she completed a certificate in Tropical Medicine at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.  Dr. Richey joined the faculty of the Medical University of South Carolina as an Assistant Professor in 2013 where she had significant teaching responsibilities, particularly as the division representative for medical student rotations and as a Program Director for the infectious disease fellowship. She was promoted to Associate Professor in July of 2017.  She joined the faculty of the Section of Infectious Disease, Department of Internal Medicine at the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans in October 2017.  She became ID Center Director in 2018 and was promoted to Professor in July of 2023. 

Dr. Richey is an active member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, recently promoted to fellow status and serving as one of IDSA’s journal club writers.  She is also an active member of the HIVMA’s Ryan White Coalition since 2021. She has both inpatient and outpatient clinical responsibilities and is responsible for teaching and mentoring the infectious disease fellows and internal medicine residents.  Her outpatient clinical work provides primary and specialty care to people with HIV and her inpatient work covers the infectious disease consult service. Her primary clinical and research interests include people with HIV and factors affecting their linkage and retention in care. Also of interest are quality improvement and comorbidities such substance, tobacco, alcohol use disorders and their impact on outcomes of people with HIV. She has authored 17 peer-reviewed papers on HIV and over 45 national posters and presentations on HIV.

Dr. Richey serves as the medical director of the Infectious Disease Center at University Medical Center in New Orleans.  The ID Center includes the HIV Outpatient Program which is a large HIV primary care clinic with over 1300 patients. The HIV Dental and HIV Prison telemedicine program add an additional 400 patients with HIV. HOP provides comprehensive, interdisciplinary HIV primary care delivered by a team of infectious diseases specialists from LSU and Tulane Schools of Medicine.  The HIV Outpatient Program receives Ryan White Part A and C funds and Dr. Richey works closely with her grants team for our application renewals, required reporting, and meetings.  The ID Center also has an active Hepatitis C treatment program, which sees around 800 patients a year. These many different programs have a multidisciplinary staff of over 75 people.