She wanted to be a professional musician, but crippling stage fright guided her back toward the field her parents had wanted her to pursue all along: medicine. A graduate of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health in 2011, Melinda Chen, MD, assistant professor in the Divisions of Endocrinology and Diabetes and Global Pediatrics, joined the Department of Pediatrics in 2020.
Before her return to Madison, Chen completed a general pediatrics residency at the Mayo School of Graduate Medical Education, a fellowship in endocrinology at Indiana University’s Riley Hospital for Children, and served as assistant professor in pediatric endocrinology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center for three years.
In those years, Chen had come to a few realizations that changed her plans, changed her approach to medicine, and led her to teaching endocrinology courses to pediatrics students in Rwanda.
Endocrinology had not been on her radar when she was choosing a specialty. She always thought pediatrics might be the path to follow — and she knew it was during her pediatrics rotation, but endocrinology would not have made the list. However, her life was changed through entering the sphere of influence of an exemplary teacher and a group that loved its work.
Her division chief now, David Allen, MD, professor of endocrinology and diabetes, was already the chief when Chen did her endocrinology rotation in medical school. “He is broadly recognized as a phenomenal teacher, and between him and the rest of the faculty, it was so easy to get excited,” she explained. “It was such a pleasure to go into that rotation every morning, working with people who were genuinely fascinated by what they were seeing every day.”
It was the first time she understood endocrine pathways and pathologies. “In classes, I just didn’t get it, but on the clinical side, I could understand how a pathology can arise and how the solutions can become very understandable,” she said. “And it was such a pleasure to be in a place where everybody enjoyed it. At the same time a light bulb was going on for me — yes, now I get it. It was even fun, and endlessly interesting.”
Chen experienced how excellent teaching can be totally transformative for students. That experience profoundly shaped her choices. (An offshoot of this experience is Chen’s current service on the PREP Editorial Board for Pediatric Endocrinology: a metamorphosis to someone helping others pass a crucial exam in a subject that had challenged her.)
Travel to countries to help those in need had been part of Chen’s family life. She had participated in a few service trips through mission organizations.
“When I started actually volunteering on a medical basis, it was usually outside of church, through a medical learning program or something set up as a medical rotation,” Chen explained. “So strangely enough, most of my medical trips have not been through religious spaces, despite my beginnings with those experiences.”
Chen’s work teaching endocrinology to pediatric medical students in Rwanda arose through her interest in practicing medicine in other countries. It was facilitated by the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s public health program’s connections to the University of Rwanda.
To develop her relationship with the University of Rwanda, Chen conducted a research project with a team in 2017–2018, published in April of 2019 in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, on the effectiveness of online teaching. The study compared online education to in-person training for teaching insulin adjustment skills to non-communicable disease providers in low-resource settings. It concluded that “though completion rate was low for online education, participant performance was comparable between the live and online instruction modalities. Thus, online education is a feasible option for specialty care training.” (From the abstract.)
Chen visited Rwanda in 2019 to further establish relationships with the university there. The initial work for the curriculum began in 2020–2021, and it was introduced before 2022. Her first trip in her current teaching capacity was in 2022. The Rwandan residents’ endocrinology module runs for four to six weeks each year, and the teaching is divided among lecturers. Chen teaches for two weeks, and her last trip was in May 2025.
The original teaching team Chen worked with included Florent Rutagarama, MD, University of Rwanda Medical School Dean, and Diane Stafford, MD, Stanford University. Clinical instructors and contributors to the teaching materials were Apoorva Aekka, MD, of Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, and Alexandre Mubiligi, MD, a practicing pediatrician in Rwanda and former recipient of early versions of Chen’s curriculum materials.
Chen quickly learned that practicing medicine in a place with limited resources differed enormously from anywhere in the United States. There are few specialists in Rwanda; pediatricians are trained in all of the areas known here as subspecialities, so the teaching is intensive and essential.
“The teaching feels as though I can make a much more profound difference,” Chen explained. “In Rwanda, you must use your medical knowledge to a fuller extent, in that you don’t have all of the testing, the consultation services, all of the imaging that you would typically have available here. As a clinician, you are using your medical knowledge and your clinical acumen to the farthest you can possibly stretch it, and then a little more. And I find that very satisfying as an academician, and as somebody who wants to help people be able to do that.”
Her current academic work involves further development and delivery of pediatric endocrinology curriculum for the University of Rwanda in Kigali, including a future endocrinology fellowship.
The teaching team’s next step in curriculum development is to put the materials online in a more publicly accessible format. This will give instructors and students in other regions of the world with similar limitations in resources better access to the educational materials.
The mission of the Division of Global Pediatrics is to promote child health equity everywhere. Its work empowers trainees, staff, and faculty with the tools, skills, and mentorship to improve the health of children worldwide, and to create an internationally recognized division that excels in global health education, advocacy, faculty development, and scholarly endeavors.
The work of the division embodies the Wisconsin Idea in a unique form, bringing the resources and expertise of the University of Wisconsin to some of the most underserved children and families globally.
The Division of Global Pediatrics aims to partner in meaningful ways with colleagues in these settings to collectively improve the health and well-being of children in ways that allow more children to not just survive, but to thrive.
Chen’s work in Rwanda is one example of the kind of diverse collaboration with international colleagues pursued by the dedicated members of the Division of Global Pediatrics.
Photo by Kate Feldt/Department of Pediatrics