Photography by Joshua Franzos
Until her junior year of high school, Mary Ellen Vajravelu planned to become a professional violinist. But with a nurse as a mother and a father with type 2 diabetes, her curiosity and passion for creative problem solving took her in a different direction.
Now a pediatric endocrinologist at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and assistant professor of pediatrics, School of Medicine, and of epidemiology, School of Public Health, Vajravelu works to find harmony between medicine, behavior and technology to improve the lives of children, adolescents and young adults with type 2 diabetes.
Through her education in biomedical engineering, medical school, a fellowship in pediatric endocrinology and a master’s degree in health policy research, the same question kept re-emerging: How do people really make decisions about their health, and how can we help them make better ones?
That question continues to propel Vajravelu’s research and clinical practice today. She uses digital tools, like continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) and fitness trackers like Fitbits, to help patients understand how behaviors influence blood sugar levels. The use of these technologies as teaching tools, she says, is exciting for the future of care.
“These tools give patients real-time feedback about what happens if you engage in certain healthy behaviors,” she said. “It’s all about making the right thing easy to choose. We have to acknowledge that when you ask somebody to come into the hospital and engage in regular lifestyle interventions in person, it’s probably not going to work so well with people who have a busy schedule or who have transportation barriers.”
Those barriers are another piece of the decision-making puzzle. Vajravelu’s research also seeks to understand the nonmedical factors—called social determinants of health—that influence someone’s health, like access to resources, economic stability, language barriers and social support. Another forthcoming study explores how these factors affect children with type 2 diabetes and how barriers to care engagement and healthy nutrition can be reduced.
While these interventions can greatly improve outcomes, the biggest change Vajravelu sees on the horizon is the proliferation of GLP-1 medications, like Ozempic and Wegovy, and the potential they have to redefine treatment for diabetes. However, much remains unknown about their use in younger populations.
Recent pilot funding from the Richard King Mellon Institute for Pediatric Research will allow Vajravelu to study how the use of GLP-1 medications in adolescents changes body composition, including monitoring for muscle mass loss and tracking how physical activity affects it. This understanding will enable physicians to make specific recommendations that help pediatric patients maximize benefits and minimize risks of these medications.
On Friday, Feb. 13, 2026, Vajravelu will present “Addressing Behavioral, Social and Biological Barriers to Optimal Health in Pediatric Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes” as part of the 2026 Senior Vice Chancellor’s Research Seminar Series. (Join the lecture here.)
She will share the challenges facing children and adolescents with type 2 diabetes, prediabetes and obesity, as well as the role that digital technologies, social determinants of health and emerging antiobesity medications all have in the effective care of this population.
Though there is still a long way to go, Vajravelu is inspired by the recent flurry of innovation in diabetes treatments.
“Until 2019, the only treatments for type 2 diabetes in kids were insulin and metformin, and now we have a whole variety of new medications for kids with type 2 diabetes—and even before that, obesity,” said Vajravelu. “For children who have type 2 diabetes, we have new tools like CGMs that can make life easier in a lot of ways, and with these emerging medications and accessible lifestyle interventions, we may be able to help children avoid developing the disease in the first place.”