Rachel Mednick Thompson, M.D.

Bio

Rachel Thompson is currently an associate professor in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of California San Diego. She will be serving as the co-Director for the Southern Family Center for Cerebral Palsy at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego. She completed a residency in orthopaedic surgery at Northwestern University and fellowships in pediatric orthopaedics and neuromuscular orthopaedics at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children and A.I. duPont Hospital for Children, respectively. Prior to joining the staff at Rady Children’s Hospital, she spent seven years at UCLA, where was served as the Residency Program Director for the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and held the William and Patricia Oppenheim Presidential Chair in Pediatric Orthopaedics at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. While at UCLA, she served as the Director for the Center for Cerebral Palsy at UCLA/Luskin Orthopaedic Institute for Children.

Along with her research team, she has developed numerous assays to study the muscular changes that occur as a result of the spasticity and decreased mobility associated with cerebral palsy. Her team’s ultimate goal is to identify the pathways that lead to joint contracture and weakness so that they may develop biologic treatments to prevent contracture and disability. Through this work, she has developed a mouse model that has been validated for the muscular pathology associated with CP. She plans to continue to develop this model and utilize it to test current and develop future treatment modalities for CP musculoskeletal pathology. Her clinical research is focused on surgical outcomes in cerebral palsy, pain management and narcotic stewardship in the pediatric population.