Dr. Laubach majored in Human Biology from Stanford University, graduating in 1996 with Honors. She received her medical education at the prestigious University of California San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine. After medical school, she completed her internship and residency in Pediatrics from the Icahn School of Medicine at the Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital in New York City. Ultimately, under the mentorship of Drs. Hugh Sampson and Scott Sicherer, who are pioneers in the field of food allergy, she decided to specialize in Allergy & Immunology. She furthered her training as a Fellow in Allergy & Immunology at Duke University under the tutelage of nationally-recognized leaders, Drs. Wesley Burks and Rebecca Buckley. 

 

After finishing Fellowship, she spent 3 years at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) in Washington, DC, serving as a civilian contractor in the Department of Allergy/Immunology. She helped care for active duty soldiers and their families, while training Army and Navy physicians in the Allergy/Immunolgy Fellowship Program. She collaborated with the training programs at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, and John’s Hopkins in Baltimore, MD, participating in weekly and quarterly education sessions. 

 

In 2011, Dr. Laubach moved to San Diego to be closer to family, working first at the Allergy & Asthma Medical Group and Research Center (AAMGRC) with Drs. Eli Meltzer, Michael Welch, Nancy Ostrom, and Alex Greiner, then as faculty at UCSD when AAMG affiliated with Rady Children’s Hospital in 2014. She served as the Clinical Director of the Division of Allergy & Immunology at Rady, Co-Director of the Rady Food Allergy Center and Food Allergy Immunotherapy Clinic, and Section Chief of the Allergy/Immunology/Rheumatology Division on the Medical Staff Executive Committee. She remains on the Medical Staff of Rady Children’s Hospital. 

 

In her academic career, she rose to Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UCSD, publishing articles (ARTICLES) in peer-reviewed medical journals; training medical students, residents, and fellows; and serving on university and hospital committees. It was at Duke that she first began her career in food allergy research, running an NIH-sponsored study of sublingual immunotherapy for peanut allergy (NIH STUDY), and participating as a sub-investigator on a number of clinical trials of oral immunotherapy for peanut, egg, and milk (see Reference list of papers below). She mentored Fellows at WRAMC to conduct clinically-relevant studies on the safety of influenza vaccines in people with food allergy (WRAMC STUDY), and the sensitivity and specificity of skin prick, intradermal, and blood testing for cat allergy, relative to a gold-standard ocular provocation test. The data was presented at the national AAAAI meeting and published. When she moved to San Diego, she began her affiliation with AAMCRC and has been an investigator on over 100 studies in the field of Allergy & Immunology. She was instrumental in facilitating a collaboration between AAMGRC and the UCSD Rady Division of Allergy & Immunology in food allergy research, uniting the groups to participate in the early Phase 2 and 3 trials on AR101 - the product that eventually was called Palforzia which went on to become the first FDA-approved treatment for peanut allergy. Along with Dr. Stephanie Leonard, Dr. Laubach co-directed the Food Allergy Center at Rady Children’s Hospital which was one of the first programs designated as a Center of Excellence by the Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE) patient advocacy group. Together, they conducted dozens of studies on food allergy diagnosis, treatment, and prevention including oral immunotherapy for peanut, milk, egg, and multiple-food allergy, epicutaneous immunotherapy (eg the peanut “patch”), biologic treatment for food allergy, nanoparticle treatment for peanut allergy, elemental formula safety in patients with food allergy, and other studies.

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Dr. Laubach has always been interested not only in the science of food allergy, but also in the human aspect of living with a potentially life-threatening medical condition. In college, Dr. Laubach received her bachelor’s in arts in the multi-disciplinary Human Biology program, focusing on medical anthropology. She designed and conducted an ethnographic research study on how physicians and other medical team members disclose difficult information to children and their parents, which was the basis for her honors thesis. During her time in northern California, she volunteered for 8 summers at Camp Okizu, a summer camp for children with cancer and their siblings, allowing her to merge her passion for children, growing medical expertise, and deep compassion for those navigating challenging medical circumstances.  After college, she worked at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics before entering medical school. During medical school, she completed an Internship program at the Washington, DC Office of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Sciences) on a publication about Palliative Care for Children. In residency, she helped found the palliative care program at the Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital whose mission is to “enhance comfort and relief of symptoms by addressing the physical, psychosocial, and spiritual needs of children [with serious illness] and their families.” 

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Since finishing her training, Dr. Laubach has continued to advocate for children with potentially life-threatening conditions. After first moving to San Diego, she was nominated to be the Asthma, Allergy, and Anaphylaxis Champion representing the local chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in the national AAP Medical Home Chapter Champions Program. She continues to serve on the Executive Committee for the AAP Section on Allergy & Immunology. In the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology (AAAAI), she is co-president of the Section on School-based Asthma, Allergy & Anaphylaxis Management Program (SA3MPRO) and member of the Adverse Reactions to Food Committee. She served on the FARE Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute advisory board (Patient-Centered Outcomes in Food Allergy | Current Allergy and Asthma Reports) helping bridge the gap between patients and medical researchers. She has traveled to Sacramento and Washtington, DC to advocate for policies to protect people with allergies.