Dr. Rinella is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and is the Director of the Metabolic and Fatty Liver Program. During the earlier part of her career, she studied basic mechanisms of steatohepatitis with funding from the American Gastroenterological Association and the National Institute of Health (NIH). Currently her focus is on clinical research in the area of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) / non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) both before and after liver transplantation. She primarily focuses on the associations between NASH, metabolic co-morbidities and the recurrence of NASH after liver transplantation.
Dr. Rinella is actively involved in the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) where she recently served as Councilor-at-large on the Governing Board. She was an author on the 2018 AASLD Practice Guidance for NAFLD and is the chair of the 2023 AASLD NAFLD Practice Guidance. She has held several national leadership roles in the field of NAFLD including Chair of the AASLD NAFLD Special Interest Group (SIG) and Chair of the AASLD NASH Task Force. As Chair of the NASH Task Force, she is was charged with fostering research collaboration and advancing best practice through collaboration with other medical societies, federal agencies and patient advocacy organizations to improve outcomes in patients with NASH. Currently, she is co-leading a pan society global initiative using a Delphi process to identify a more suitable terminology for what we currently refer to as NAFLD. She was recently appointed chair of the Steatotic Liver Disease task force, which will oversee 2 subcommittees focused on national and global strategies, respectively, to increase disease awareness and foster implementation of best practice.
