Colleen Kelly, MD, FACG

Colleen Kelly, MD, FACG, is a gastroenterologist with Lifespan Physician Group Gastroenterology in East Providence. She is an associate professor of medicine at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and a faculty member in the fellowship pathway in women’s gastrointestinal diseases at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. She received a medical degree from Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, completed a residency in internal medicine at Boston Medical Center, and completed a fellowship in gastroenterology at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. She is a fellow of the American College of Gastroenterology.

Dr. Kelly has been an active participant in the Rhode Island Pelvic Floor Network and led the irritable bowel syndrome and motility effort at Women & Infants Hospital before moving to Lifespan. She is nationally recognized in the field of gut flora and its implication in recurrent C. difficile infection. The focus of her research and clinical practice is fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) and she has assisted many physicians and institutions in developing FMT protocols.

Dr. Kelly has authored a number of papers and abstracts on the subject and was a member of a working group that drafted a best-practices article for treating C. difficile infection with FMT, published in 2011. Dr. Kelly is a principal investigator for the first US clinical trial of FMT to treat relapsing C. difficile infection, funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). She is on the board of advisors of the Fecal Transplant Foundation. Dr. Kelly is board certified in gastroenterology. Her clinical interests include fecal transplantation, treatment of C. difficile, chronic diarrhea and other gastrointestinal motility disorders common in women, such as constipation and irritable bowel syndrome. Areas of expertise include C. difficile treatment, fecal transplantation, inflammatory bowel diseases, and women’s health.

Research

The focus of Dr. Kelly’s research and clinical practice is Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) and fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT). She was the principal investigator (PI) for a first placebo-controlled trial of FMT for treatment of recurrent CDI and one of the first investigators to sponsor an investigational new drug application for FMT with the Food and Drug Administration. She has since served on several working groups focusing on regulatory issues related to FMT. Dr. Kelly is currently site PI for an industry-funded trial of live microbiota for treatment of recurrent CDI as well as investigator-initiated clinical trials assessing conventional FMT for CDI treatment. Dr. Kelly is interested in the long-term effects around manipulation of gut microbiota and serves as one of the PIs for an NIH-funded FMT National Registry that will answer important questions about the safety of FMT. She has collaborated on several studies investigating the impact of FMT on patients with inflammatory bowel disease, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and alopecia areata.