Laurie A Keefer, PhD

Laurie Keefer, PhD is a Clinical Health Psychologist and Professor of Medicine, Psychiatry and Biomedical Sciences at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. She received her PhD from the University of Albany in New York and completed a residency and fellowship in health psychology and gastroenterology at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. For the past 20 years, Dr Keefer has been a champion for integrated psychosocial care in GI settings and has trained many in this model around the world. Currently, Dr Keefer is the Director of Psychobehavioral Research within the Division of Gastroenterology at Mount Sinai with a federally and foundation funded research portfolio focused on resilience and self-regulatory interventions for gastrointestinal symptoms.

Dr Keefer’s scientific contributions include the development and implementation of self-management and behavioral intervention tools, a.k.a brain-gut behavior therapies for conditions such as IBD, IBS, and DGBI. Her research expertise includes behavioral intervention trial design and execution, mixed methods research, implementation and scaling of self-regulatory tools, patient reported outcome measure development and advanced psychometrics.

Dr Keefer is the inventor of the “GRITT Method,” a systematic approach to risk stratification, team communication and personalized care planning for patients with chronic conditions seen in multidisciplinary settings. This methodology, developed at Mount Sinai, was licensed to Trellus Health, of which Dr Keefer is a co-founder. 

Dr Keefer is Founder and Chair of the Rome Foundation’s international GastroPsych organization and serves on their Board of Directors. She is a sought-after speaker, mentor and collaborator.