Congratulations to Rebekah "Ryanne" Wu, MD, who received a distinguished academic promotion in the division of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Wu is being promoted to Associate Professor, effective August 1, 2021. Since joining Duke faculty in 2015, she has served a number of critical roles that integrate her clinical, research and academic interests.
“It gives me tremendous pleasure to announce Dr. Wu's promotion to Associate Professor. As you know, these academic promotions mark faculty members’ scholarly achievements and are a hallmark of professional accomplishment in our school. Faculty appointed to Associate Professor have achieved recognition within Duke and at peer institutions as leaders in their fields both nationally and/or internationally.”
- L. Ebony Boulware, MD, MPH – Chief, Duke GIM
Dr. Wu has served as a core faculty member of the Center for Applied Genomics and Precision Medicine (CAGPM) within the Department of Medicine, and currently serves as Director of the Genome Forum. She precepts Internal Medicine residents at the Durham VA PRIME clinic. In this setting, she instructs interns and residents in the primary care of medically complex patients, as well as the pathophysiology of chronic disease and its treatment.
During fellowship, Wu developed expertise in implementation science with a specific focus on precision medicine and primary care. This has led to multiple publications in the area of family history-based health risk assessment based on the CAGPM team’s development and evaluation of MeTree, a patient-facing, web-based software program. During fellowship, she also worked closely with Dr. Dawn Provenzale to understand implementation evaluations within the VA research and clinical context.
Shortly after Wu joined faculty in 2015, she moved to Singapore for a period of three years and where she had a joint appointment at Duke-NUS Medical School in the Health Services and Systems Research Program. During her three years there, Dr. Wu joined the SingHealth/Duke-NUS Institute of Precision Medicine (PRISM) and worked with a multi-disciplinary team running a population-based whole genome sequencing program (SPECTRA). Her involvement led to integration of the MeTree platform into SPECTRA and development of an ongoing collaborative relationship between PRISM and Duke’s CAGPM. This work has resulted in one of the first healthy population cohorts with detailed family health history and whole genome sequencing data.
Since returning to Duke, Dr. Wu’s experiences in Singapore and at Duke-NUS have provided her a unique perspective which she is now actively bringing back to the Duke community. Upon returning, she was invited to join the Department of Medicine’s Genome Sequencing working group, a small group of precision medicine experts across the department led by Drs. Kathleen Cooney and Scott Palmer, that are evaluating the potential avenues for introducing genomic sequencing activities into the health system.
Over her career at Duke, Dr. Wu has been the first author on a number of notable publications in such journals as Journal of General Internal Medicine, Genetics in Medicine, Implementation Science, among others.
We look forward to Dr. Wu’s continuing contributions to science and to the faculty and trainees of Duke University!