Dr. Patterson is a rheumatology physician-scientist in the UCSF Department of Medicine and a member of the research faculty at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Health (OCIH). She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MD from UCSF. She completed her Internal Medicine residency, rheumatology fellowship, and a postdoctoral research fellowship in Integrative Health at UCSF, joined the Rheumatology Division faculty in 2019, and became an Osher Center core research faculty member in 2022.
Dr. Patterson’s research focuses on understanding how lifestyle factors—including physical activity, nutrition, and stress—affect disease outcomes in people with rheumatic diseases. Her work examines the biologic and clinical effects of stress, stress resilience, and physical activity in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). She is the principal investigator of a pilot trial evaluating a mindfulness-based intervention for people living with RA and is committed to translating research on lifestyle and integrative health into improved patient-centered care.
Clinically, Dr. Patterson specializes in SLE and in integrating evidence-based lifestyle and integrative health approaches with standard-of-care disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) in the treatment of systemic autoimmune rheumatic conditions. She provides care in the UCSF Lupus Clinic, the Osher Center Integrative Rheumatology Clinic, and on the inpatient rheumatology consult service.