Katherine Mitchell Wentzell

Katie Wentzell is the recipient of the Isabel Hampton Robb Scholarship, which is awarded to the doctoral student with the highest evaluation score. Katie is currently a second year doctoral student at Boston College William F. Connell School of Nursing. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Biology and English from Colby College and her Master’s in Nursing from Boston College. She is currently a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner in the Pediatric, Adolescent and Young Adult Section at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston.

During her years as a clinician, she cultivated a cohort of adolescent and your adult patients that struggled with managing Type 1 diabetes (T1D). From this experience, it became clear that reduced adherence is not due to a deficit in knowledge nor a desire to be unhealthy, but rather the developmental and cognitive hurdles of adolescence and young adulthood that make decision making more complicated.

Accordingly, Katie decided to pursue her doctorate to become a nurse scientist. Her research goal is to understand the emotional burden of living with T1D and to ultimately develop innovative approaches to improve life with diabetes for these patients. Sje has been a Co-Investigator on multiple multi-center FDA trials for new devices and drugs, published several articles on the use of technology in youth with T1D and received an inaugural Joslin Diabetes Center Clinical Innovation Award to develop a pioneering accessible care model to improve glycemic control in high-risk young adults with T1D. These experiences underscore her passion to develop her own research questions to promote behavior changes and reduce the emotional burden of living T1D.