Jennifer Flemming
- Clinician Scientist, KGHRI
- Member, Division of Cancer Care and Epidemiology, Cancer Research Institute, Queen's University
- Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology
- Cross-appointee, Department of Public Health Sciences, Queen’s University
- Epidemiology and natural history of cirrhosis
- Hepatitis C
- Primary liver cancers
Dr. Jennifer Flemming joined the Faculty of Medicine at Queen’s University in 2014 as a member of the Division of Gastroenterology. She completed medical school at Dalhousie University (2006) and completed Internal Medicine (2009) and Gastroenterology training (2011) at Queen’s University. She then spent two years at the University of California San Francisco completing subspecialty training in Hepatology and Liver Transplantation as well as obtaining her Master’s Degree (MAS) in Advanced Clinical Research.
- MD 2006, Dalhousie University
- Internal Medicine Residency 2006-2009, Queen’s University
- Gastroenterology Fellowship 2009-2011, Queen’s University
- Advanced Hepatology/Liver Transplantation Fellowship 2011-2013, University of California San Francisco
- Masters of Advanced Studies (MAS) in Clinical Research 2013, University of California San Francisco
Awards & honours
2014 Southeastern Ontario Academic Medical Association New Clinician Scientist Award
2012 Young Investigator Travel Award – American Association for the Study of Liver Disease
2012 Canadian Association for the Study of the Liver (CASL) / Merck Clinical Fellowship in Hepatology
2011 Best Resident Research Presentation – Department of Medicine, Queen’s University
2011 Poster of Distinction – Digestive Diseases Week 2011, Chicago
2010 Best Resident Research Presentation – Department of Medicine, Queen’s University
2010 Levy/Thomson Award for Outstanding Oral Presentation - Canadian Digestive Disease Week
2009 Professors Award – Department of Medicine, Queen’s University
2009 Clinical Skills and Scholarship Award – Department of Medicine, Queen’s University
2009 Resident Research Award – Physician Services Inc.
2009 Resident Achievement Award – Ontario Medical Association
2008 Resident Research Day, Second Prize – Department of Medicine, Queen’s University
2008 Canadian Digestive Diseases Week 2008 Scholars Program
2006 Dalhousie ‘Silver D’ Award
2005 Alpha Omega Alpha Honors Medical Society
2005 Ross Stewart Smith Scholarship – Dalhousie University
2004 Norah Stephen’s Oncology Scholars Award
Dr. Flemming is the first in Canada studying the links between cirrhosis and biliary tract cancer (a rare subset of liver cancer) from both a clinical and population perspective. The key to her work is leveraging information in large patient databases.
The current phase of her research program, conducted in the division of Cancer Care and Epidemiology (CCE) at the Queen’s Cancer Research Institute, involves extracting information from pathology reports in patients with biliary tract cancer and looking at the natural history, treatment outcomes, and mortality trends in this population. The next phase of her research will look at the burden of chronic liver disease and cirrhosis in Ontario and the association between cirrhosis and biliary tract cancers. This work will enable her to quantify the burden of biliary tract cancer across the Ontario population, and then identify disease trends, risk factors, and outcomes. This will be done by merging her databases at CCE with provincial health records.
Long-term, Dr. Flemming hopes to use the results of her population-based research to justify the development of a chronic disease management strategy for Canadians with liver disease.
