PolicyLab

Sabrina Gmuca (she/her) is a faculty member at PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and an attending physician in the Division of Pediatric Rheumatology and the Center for Amplified Musculoskeletal Pain Syndrome at CHOP. She is also an instructor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.

Dr. Gmuca’s research seeks to enhance the care of children with chronic non-inflammatory musculoskeletal pain. Specifically, her research addresses amplified musculoskeletal pain syndrome (AMPS), which is a major public health issue because of its high prevalence, related socioeconomic burden and associated risk of opioid exposure and polypharmacy. Dr. Gmuca’s work aims to identify innovative strategies to improve long-term treatment outcomes for this patient population as well as increased accessibility to non-pharmacologic multidisciplinary treatment modalities. She is specifically interested in the role of resilience in adolescents with chronic pain and their parents, as well as the appropriate evaluation and management of neurocognitive impairment in youth with juvenile fibromyalgia syndrome. Dr. Gmuca is the recipient of the 2017 American College of Rheumatology Distinguished Fellow Award and the 2017 CHOP Distinguished Research Trainee Award. She was also awarded the Thrasher Research Fund Early Career Award in 2018.

Dr. Gmuca earned her Bachelor of Science from the University of Rochester in 2007. She attended State University of New York Downstate where she earned her medical degree in 2011. She was also an intern and resident in pediatrics at NYU Langone Medical Center/Bellevue Hospital. Dr. Gmuca completed her pediatric rheumatology fellowship at CHOP and received her Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology from University of Pennsylvania.