Lauren Elson, MD is the Director of Dance Medicine at Spaulding Rehabilitation. Board certified in sports medicine and physical medicine and rehabilitation, she attended Tufts University School of Medicine, did her residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital Columbia/Cornell, and completed a fellowship in Sports Medicine at Stanford University.
Lauren deferred medical school to apprentice with a contemporary/tap company and has taught jazz, ballet, tap, hip-hop, African, swing, and salsa. During college, she created her own major: Dance and Human Movement Studies, and received a fellowship to travel to the Gambia to investigate how African dance is used as a form of communication among different tribal groups/religions. She danced with Rainbow Tribe from 1999-2014 (when in Boston) and has been dancing with Cambridge Dance Company since its inception in 2012.
During her medical education, she had the opportunity to train with the physicians that care for ABT and NYCB and was a clinician at the Healthy Dancer Clinic in San Francisco. She chairs the Freelance Dancer Committee on the Dance/USA Taskforce on Dance Health and is a member of the International Association of Dance Medicine and Science and the Performing Arts Medical Association. She has given lectures, locally and internationally, on dance health and injury prevention to dancers and professional organizations.
Dr. Elson is interested in developing dance health and education programs in the Boston area as well uniting the dance medicine community to provide dancers with better access to specialized care.