Suzanne Lee is the staff physician at the Center for Patient Partnerships. Her areas of expertise include helping clients understand confusing diagnoses and their ramifications; researching the medical literature to assist patients in making evidence-based treatment choices; interfacing with the medical community to improve patient/physician communication; and, her favorite, searching for clinical trials.
Suzanne graduated with a bachelor's degree in art history from Mount Holyoke College, and a medical degree from Wayne State University. Her post-graduate training includes a pediatric internship, followed by residency training in adult psychiatry at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, where she won the Michael Reese Medical Staff Award in recognition of "professional competence and a warm and humane attitude toward patients and their families." While at Michael Reese, Suzanne implemented a psychiatric screening program for all pediatric oncology in-patients. She has additional fellowship training in child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Chicago. She has also worked in hospital consultation-liaison psychiatry and community mental health psychiatry.
Advocacy has been a way of life for Suzanne's family. Her mother, a cancer survivor and life-long community activist, is the president of the board for a non-profit agency serving at-risk youth. Suzanne's father, a physician and survivor of advanced prostate cancer, assertively advocated that he be treated with novel therapies and has dedicated the latter part of his career to the cryosurgical treatment of prostate cancer. He is also an outspoken advocate for the screening and early diagnosis of prostate cancer.
Suzanne's most personal effort navigating our complex medical system was advocating for her own son, who was having medical problems and facing developmental disabilities. Married to a physician, and counting many medical doctors among her family and friends, Suzanne is able to draw knowledge from a vast array of specialists.
