Chelsea Harris, MD, MS, is a board-eligible plastic surgeon with a broad-based reconstructive practice. She has a special clinical interest in abdominal wall reconstruction, body contouring, and wound care, and values a multi-disciplinary approach to surgical planning. Additionally, Dr. Harris performs transmasculine chest wall reconstruction ("top surgery") and reconstruction for a variety of traumatic and cancer-related injuries.
Dr. Harris' Clinical Interests Include:
- Abdominal wall reconstruction
- Post-bariatric body contouring
- Post-oncologic reconstruction
- Wound care
- Limb salvage
Dr. Harris earned her undergraduate degree from Brown University, her medical degree from the University of Vermont, and completed her General Surgery training at the University of Maryland/Shock Trauma. During her general surgery residency, she completed a two-year T32 research fellowship through University of Michigan’s Center for Health Outcomes and Policy, where she also earned a Masters in Health Services Research. She completed her Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University.
Dr. Harris' Research Interests Include:
- Health Services
- How to better elucidate patient preferences and integrate them into care
- Building data-driven approaches to evaluate and improve medical culture to better meet the holistic needs of patients and providers
- Systems-based approaches to patients' complex reconstructive needs, such as those encountered in non-healing wounds, abdominal wall reconstruction, and trauma
Dr. Harris has garnered international recognition through her work with the Cultural Complications Curriculum, a program that guides medical professionals in attending to instances of cultural breakdown with the same rigor they apply to medical or surgical errors. Her research has been supported with intramural and societal grant funding. Dr. Harris is also a leader in leveraging social media for research dissemination, having served as Creative Director at Annals of Surgery and the American Journal of Surgery. Over the course of her training, she has won multiple teaching and professional awards, and was the 2021 recipient of the Association of Women Surgeon’s Hilary Sanfey Outstanding Resident award.
Dr. Harris strives to understand patients' functional and aesthetic goals better so that they can tailor a surgical approach to improve their lives together. She seeks to honor each patient's unique identity and context to craft an approach that is safe, effective, and reflective of their individuality.
In her spare time, Dr. Harris enjoys skiing, ice hockey, broomball, hiking, painting, Broadway musicals, and spending time with family.