Dr. Angela Li is a bridge between two worlds.
Born in China, she was 6 years old when her engineer parents immigrated to the U.S. to pursue the American dream in New Jersey.
Fluent in Mandarin and English, Dr. Lin now is a board-certified pediatrician and adult congenital heart disease (CHD) specialist.
She joined Rady Children’s Health Orange County and UC Irvine in January, tasked with developing a program to help CHD patients transition from adolescent to adult care.
It’s a critical process of bridging a gap that is aimed at helping patients gain independence and maximizing lifelong functioning.
Gaps in care
About 1% of babies are born with heart disease and more than 90 percent survive into adulthood, according to Dr. Li. There are more than 1.4 million adults with CHD in the U.S., significantly outnumbering children.
More than 40% of pediatric CHD patients nationwide experience significant gaps in specialized cardiac care during the transition to adulthood, with nearly one-quarter entirely lost to follow-up care after the transition period of ages 12 to 18.
This puts these adults at significant risk of acquiring comorbidities including atherosclerosis, hypertension, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia, among other conditions.
“Structured transition programs for pediatric CHD patients are a life-saving clinical necessity,” says Dr. Li. “Some kids don’t think they need to see a doctor anymore when they turn 18 and go off to college. Some get lost in the system and show up 30 years later experiencing severe heart failure.”
A fascination with the heart
Dr. Li has always been interested in biology and how the body works and grew up with a lot of compassion and empathy for others.
Focused on a career in medicine since high school, she attended Johns Hopkins University for her undergraduate degree, where she double majored in molecular and cellular biology and East Asian Studies. During her school breaks, she had the opportunity to do additional research and volunteer in China, reconnecting with her roots: Her great-grandfather was a well-known Chinese medicine doctor in the early 1900s.
At Johns Hopkins, she also performed basic research, such as culturing stem cells to see how they could diverge into malignant cells.
She completed her medical degree at Penn State College of Medicine, where she developed an interest in cardiology.
“The heart starts off as one tube,” Dr. Li explains. “Based on cell migration, it twists into the four chambers of the heart. That fascinated me.”
Dr. Li then served her internal medicine-pediatrics residency at Rush University in Chicago, where she fostered an interest in adult CHD.
She went on to Hofstra/North Shore University in New York for both her general cardiology and interventional cardiology fellowship, after which she completed her adult congenital heart disease fellowship at UCLA.
She sought out UCLA to work with Dr. Jamil A. Aboulhosn, a national leader in adult congenital interventions who directs the Ahmanson/UCLA Adult Congenital Heart Disease Center.
“Dr. Li is a diligent and caring physician,” Dr. Aboulhosn says.
Preparation is everything
Dr. Li’s training has allowed her to work at the intersection of interventional cardiology, structural heart disease, and adult CHD.
There are some 3,400 Rady Children’s Hospital CHD patients in the transition phase (ages 12 to 17) and about 2,000 who are older than 18, according to Dr. Li.
Developing an ACHD team will be a multiyear process.
“A lot of these patients are in their mid-20s and are just learning about their heart disease,” Dr. Li says. “Not that we want them to leave us,” she says, “but eventually we want them to transition out and to be as prepared as possible.”
Dr. Li spends about 60% of her time at UCI. She devotes 30% of her time to Rady Children’s Hospital, working in the catheterization lab, and 10% to UCLA, where she still has rotations.
“This is everything I wanted in a job,” Dr. Li says. “It’s difficult to find a job where you are working with adult CHD patients and also performing interventional cardiac procedures. It’s a unique niche.”
Several of Dr. Li’s colleagues at Rady Children’s Hospital care for young adult CDH patients, including pediatric cardiologist Dr. Anthony McCanta, who specializes in electrophysiology.
Outside of work, Dr. Li is a foodie and avid Yelp reviewer.
She belongs to a handful of running clubs and has completed several half-marathons.
“I try to maintain a healthy lifestyle to set an example for my young patients,” Dr. Li says. “Need to walk the walk, as they say!”
CHOC and UCLA Health together have been ranked among the top children’s hospitals in the nation for Cardiology & Heart Surgery by U.S. News & World Report.
