PHS Insider - Cindy Wen

| 10 October 2025

“Confronting the intersection of my identities in the many contacts I made with the healthcare system, I realized that health was more than just physiological, but rather sociopolitical, economic, cultural, and environmental”

Meet Cindy Wen, a current student in the Queen’s University MD/PhD program, whose journey reflects resilience, reflection, and a deep commitment to advancing health equity. Cindy aspires to pursue an academic clinician-scientist career where medicine and research work together to improve care for diverse populations.

For Cindy, the road to this MD/PhD degree has been anything but linear. It was shaped by lived experiences, self-exploration, and growth. As a woman of colour who grew up in an immigrant household with a parent who had limited English proficiency, Cindy recalls firsthand the barriers she encountered. These experiences strengthened her drive towards health equity research and advocacy. At the same time, her love for reading, storytelling and human connection drew her toward medicine. “I knew I couldn’t live without pursuing both,” she explains, “the role of a clinician-scientist encompasses everything I value.”

Fascinated by the fact that healthcare was more than just physiological, and that it intersected with the sociopolitical, economic, cultural, and environmental spheres, she pursued research to seek answers and become more involved in health equity advocacy. In doing so, one of Cindy’s most impactful projects while completing her undergraduate degree with an Honours Specialization in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, was leading a health equity initiative in transplantation at the University Health Network. Her work focused on improving access to transplantation for Chinese and East Asian Canadian communities and it taught her the importance of community-driven research and critical reflection on social positionality.

Now in her second year of PhD training, Cindy is working under the co-supervision of Dr. Sahar Saeed and Dr. Jennifer Flemming on a thesis that aims to optimize liver fibrosis risk stratification and care pathways for Canadians with type 2 diabetes. Steatotic liver disease affects nearly 70% of people with type 2 diabetes, yet many remain unaware due to its silent progression. Current established recommendations utilize risk stratification methods to identify people with high-risk advanced fibrosis within this population, however, this approach relies on a uniform “one size fits all” method. Furthermore, through lived experience of receiving care in gastroenterology and hepatology, alongside having family with these experiences, she strongly believes that these methods can be further refined. Therefore, to address these issues, Cindy is working to create equitable and robust care pathways that takes more into consideration of the individual and contextual factors and the heterogeneous needs of patients through using Ontario’s health administrative data from the ICES and advanced statistical modelling.

On a broader level, throughout her PhD, she works closely with world-renowned team of methodologists, clinicians and organizations such as, The Fatty Liver Alliance, Diabetes Canada, CanMASLD, and the Canadian Association for the Study of the Liver. She is privileged to have the opportunities in working with an interdisciplinary team passionate about optimizing the way our health system delivers care for those most in need.

The MD/PhD program at Queen’s is a total of 7 years across both disciplines, with the first 2 years being PhD. While Cindy has not yet formally entered the MD portion of her program, she is looking forward to starting her MD next year with a lot of excitement and gratitude. Although she is anticipating challenges of moving back and forth between the two domains, Cindy believes that it will be the most rewarding part of her experience, “actively living within both worlds and leveraging them to inform each other,” she reflects.

Outside of medicine and research, Cindy finds balance through long-distance running, a passion that began in elementary school when a teacher encouraged her to try the 1500m race despite always being a sprinter. What started as a “brutal” race turned into a lifelong love. Now, she runs several times a week and is training for half-marathons and her first full marathon. Long-distance running is not only an escape from the daily stressors of life but also a metaphor for her career path since it teaches resilience and endurance, the same qualities that are needed to navigate the marathon that is MD/PhD training.

“The MD/PhD pathway reflects the true effort of a marathon, not a sprint.”

When asked to share advice for future MD/PhD students, Cindy emphasizes the importance of intention and reflection. She encourages students to carefully consider the long journey ahead, which requires significant personal, financial, and time commitments. She highlights the value of finding mentors who can advocate, guide, and open doors, as well as seeking opportunities for growth that will help uncover and stay connected to your sense of purpose. Cindy is open about her own struggles with imposter syndrome, but she urges students not to let it define them and to own your accomplishments and take up space in your field of study. Finally, she reminds students to nurture their joy outside of academia and research, whether through hobbies, friendships, or family, and to find a balance for their mental and physical health.

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PHS Insider - Cindy Wen

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