Associate Professor of Pediatrics Children’s Mercy Kansas City and University of Missouri-Kansas City

Dr. Laroche is a physician board certified in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. She is also certified by the American Board of Obesity Medicine and a fellow of the American Board of Pediatrics. She is the Scientific Medical Director of the Center for Children’s Healthy Lifestyles & Nutrition. Along with being a practicing pediatric obesity specialist, she is a NIH and CDC funded researcher focuses on community and family approaches to obesity prevention and treatment and the intersection between social determinants of health and childhood obesity. She works in partnership with community-based organizations and healthcare to design obesity interventions for families and improve systems to aid families with social needs. She is also the outgoing chair of the Child and Family Health SIG of the Society of Behavioral Medicine.

Dr. Laroche graduated from Brown University with a degree in Sociology. She attended University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine and completed an Internal Medicine and Pediatrics residency at University of Rochester in New York. She completed the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and a pediatric health services research fellowship at University of Michigan. She was then faculty at University of Iowa School of Medicine until 2020 when she accepted her current position.