Mona Shahriari, MD, FAAD

The Medical Sisterhood: The Strength Nobody Talks About, with Saakshi Khattri, MD

 podcast, host Mona Shahriari, MD, associate clinical professor of 

 at Yale University and practicing dermatologist in Connecticut, sat down with Saakshi Khattri, MD, a triple board-certified physician in dermatology, rheumatology, and internal medicine, associate professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and director of Mount Sinai’s Dermatology/Rheumatology service. Together, the 2 physicians explored themes of reinvention, contentment, boundaries, and redefining success for women in medicine.

The conversation centered on the idea that personal and professional growth often requires letting go of earlier definitions of achievement. Reflecting on her career, Khattri noted that her priorities have changed significantly over time. While she once focused heavily on academic accomplishments and professional milestones, she now views contentment, not achievement, as the more meaningful goal. For Khattri, contentment can take many forms, ranging from meaningful work and relationships to simple daily pleasures, emphasizing that fulfillment often evolves throughout different stages of life.

Shahriari and Khattri discussed how expectations placed on women can shape perceptions of success and self-worth. Khattri reflected on how many women are conditioned to seek external validation, whether through career accomplishments, societal expectations, or personal milestones. She argued that fulfillment is more likely to come from defining success internally rather than allowing others to dictate what achievement should look like.

A major theme of the episode involved reinvention. Khattri described how her own life unfolded differently than she once imagined, recalling that as a young medical student she envisioned a future centered around marriage and a large family. Instead, her career, personal experiences, and changing priorities led her down a very different path. She emphasized that evolution is a natural part of life and that individuals should not feel obligated to remain tied to goals or identities formed decades earlier.

The discussion also explored how personal adversity can alter perspective. Khattri shared that a breast cancer diagnosis in her late 30s became a turning point, prompting her to reassess what truly mattered and encouraging a greater focus on joy, purpose, and personal values. She explained that experiences like serious illness can shift attention away from external markers of success and toward a deeper appreciation of life’s priorities.

Another recurring topic was the importance of boundaries. Khattri argued that physicians, particularly women, are often not taught how to establish limits in their professional lives.

 She recounted experiences involving patient expectations and professional obligations that reinforced the necessity of protecting personal time and wellbeing. Both she and Shahriari acknowledged that learning to say “no” can be difficult, but described it as essential for long-term sustainability and happiness.

The pair also addressed vulnerability among high-achieving women. Khattri noted that many women feel pressure to appear strong and composed in professional settings, often suppressing emotions out of concern that vulnerability could be perceived as weakness. While she emphasized the importance of having safe outlets through family, friends, or therapy, she acknowledged that these expectations remain deeply ingrained.

As the episode concluded, Khattri offered advice for the next generation of women physicians: seek validation from within, establish boundaries early, and define success according to personal values rather than societal expectations. Ultimately, both physicians framed reinvention not as failure, but as an ongoing process of growth, self-discovery, and becoming more fully aligned with one’s authentic self.

Neither speak had any notable disclosures of note

Editor’s note: This episode was produced with the help of AI tools.

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Wang ML, Narcisse MR, Rodriguez K, McElfish PA. Gender disparities in job flexibility, job security, psychological distress, work absenteeism, and work presenteeism among U.S. adults. SSM Popul Health. 2025 Feb 3;29:101761. 

Podcasts

This June episode of the podcast highlights one clinicians journey and experiences as a woman physician in the dermatology and rheumatology fields.

Revolutionizing Atopic Dermatitis (RAD) Conference

 spoke in an interview with Mona Shahriari, MD, associate clinical professor of dermatology at Yale School of Medicine and associate director of clinical trials at Central Connecticut Dermatology Research, who discussed several emerging themes shaping the future of atopic dermatitis management.

Shahriari, also known for her role as host of 

, touched on the therapeutic landscape’s expansion, highlighting a variety of developments that may further transform treatment strategies. She further emphasized the importance of helping patients navigate an increasingly complex array of options. Outside of novel therapies, Shahriari also noted the practical realities of managing chronic inflammatory disease in everyday practice.

 followed her RAD presentation, which she also highlighted during the interview.

 The following transcription covers Shahriari’s responses to inquiries about these topics:

There is so much going on today in the atopic dermatitis treatment landscape. What recent developments are most exciting to you?

I think one of the biggest revelations in the treatment landscape is the [news about] OX40-targeting drugs. Up until now, a lot of our drugs had been suppressing inflammation, but the OX40 pathway gives us the potential for a drug that can maybe retrain and even rebalance your immune system and give you the potential for disease modification. They are not by far the fastest drugs in the world, but for them it's more of a marathon and not a sprint.

Obviously, we're going to be watching their safety closely because of some of the signals that we've seen in phase three trials thus far, but I think just targeting the pathway a little bit differently, above the level of the cytokines, above the level of the T-cells that make those cytokines, and really going into that inflammatory prequel really has the potential to give us a different level of skin clearance.

Counseling patients with atopic dermatitis is necessary in dermatology. What are some key ways for clinicians to counsel patients with the inflammatory skin disease?

 I feel like prevention is the best thing to do. I counsel them from day one, so that we can avoid the impatience coming down the road. I kind of feel for my AD patients. People think these patients will put up with a lot because they've had their disease for so long. I actually think the contrary; we promised them the world as a specialty and we failed miserably. So, when a treatment is not working, they're very quick to think, ‘This is just like all the other treatments that I've gotten. Why should I stick with it?’

At the get-go, I tell them, ‘All right, this is the realistic expectation of what you can expect in four weeks, eight weeks, sixteen weeks. How long are we going to give this drug to work?’ I check in with them periodically. My first touch point is always at the four-week mark, no matter what drug I start them on. That's partly to kind of see what the insurance piece has been, and make sure they continue on the regimen, but also to keep that touch point and make sure I can reassure them and help them move in the right direction. One thing, especially for patients with skin of color, is when they see the AD fade, the dark marks stay, so they may think the treatment's not working, when in fact this is just a footprint of what was, so that additional counseling can help them adhere to treatment.

But then after four weeks I see them back three months later, I get them to that point where things are in good shape, and then we spread out the visit, so again that hand holding, I think, helps the process, but I also tell them, you know what, if we're not where we need to be, I have a lot of other targeted treatments that I can give you. We'll just take it step by step, and just know this is not your only option, but it is a lot of counseling, hand-holding, and remembering at the end of the day this is hard on them. They're living with their AD every single day, so all we can do is just help them and guide them through the process.

 How do you address concerns over adherence in atopic dermatitis management?

I don't always ask them about how often they are taking this medicine, or how often they are injecting it. I ask them, ‘How many injections did you forget, how many pills did you forget?’ I think that kind of opens the door to a more truthful answer. You may not necessarily get the right answer that you're looking for, but part of it is that part of it is just looking at their skin. If there is a drug that should be working and an individual's not getting better. I start to wonder, ‘What is going on here?’

I remember actually one of my patients back in the day, and this was for psoriasis, not for eczema. It was a child who was on one of the blockbuster medicines that worked so fast. Every visit he would see me, nothing had changed, and I was like, this is very odd. So I asked the mom, are you sure he's taking it? And she was like, oh yeah, he's doing his own injections. I'm like, can you just go and check?

They went to the basement; there was a fridge full of injectable medicine. Then we realized, okay, someone needs to be monitoring it. But you have that gut instinct. I think we're kind of like detectives in dermatology, where you get that spidey sense that tells you something is off. Then I start to look for other reasons why their skin is not responding, and sometimes adherence becomes the main reason.

You presented during a session titled ‘Medical Crossfire.’ What atopic dermatitis treatments were highlighted during this panel discussion?

We did something fun this year where each of us decided to take a drug class and really advocate for that specific drug class, whether or not we feel that way, but we were going to go to town. This is our drug; everything about it is number one, everybody else is number two. We're really going to help the audience see in that art of therapy selection why you would pick one drug class versus another, and how you can best match the treatment to the person in front of you.

We're using an ‘Avengers’ theme, so each of the drugs is going to be represented by an Avenger. Hopefully, there are some Marvel universe people who are watching this who are interested. I think it's a very unique approach, and hopefully it'll be memorable for the audience. They can take some key pearls back to clinical practice.

What developments are you most excited about right now outside of this conference?

 I'm the host of the Medical Sisterhood, which is a podcast that I developed a little over a year ago with the help of HCPLive. It is dedicated to women's empowerment in dermatology, and I love that it's really kind of taken a life of its own at this point, where we're really helping not only women in dermatology, but also across the landscape. Women who are professionals, working moms, really. Helping them to better understand how they can reach work-life balance, and better understand the challenges that everybody goes through.

It’s to help people kind of see that what you see on the outside is oftentimes people's highlight reel, but there's a lot of behind the scenes that everyone goes through. That can hopefully help ground them. Thus far, we've been focusing on work-life balance and establishing that sisterhood. Moving forward, we're going to give it more of a medical twist and see how we can better apply this sisterhood to having more connections in the field of dermatology.

Disclosures: AbbVie, Apogee, Arcutis, Bristol Myers Squibb, Dermavant, Galderma, Incyte, Johnson & Johnson, LEO, Lilly USA, Novartis, Regeneron, Sanofi-Genzyme, Takeda, UCB, Pfizer, and others.

Nguyen H, Bunick C, Cotter D, Shahriari M. Medical Crossfire and Clinical Case Challenge. Session presented at: 2026 Revolutionizing Atopic Dermatitis Conference; June 17-19, 2026; Nashville, TN.

Articles

OX40-targeting agents represent a notable shift in atopic dermatitis therapeutics, aiming beyond cytokine suppression toward potential immune “retraining” and disease modification, albeit with slower onset and close safety scrutiny after phase 3 signals. Effective management increasingly hinges on expectation-setting and structured follow-up to support persistence through variable response timelines and payer hurdles. Counseling is particularly important in skin of color, where postinflammatory dyspigmentation may outlast active dermatitis and be misread as treatment failure. Adherence assessment benefits from nonjudgmental questioning and clinical pattern recognition.

This Q&A interview with Mona Shahriari, MD, highlights key atopic dermatitis tips, new developments, and themes from her session at RAD 2026.

Q&A: What Are the Most Exciting New Atopic Dermatitis Developments? With Mona Shahriari, MD

What is the Most Contested Issue in Atopic Dermatitis Today? With Mona Shahriari, MD

Mona Shahriari, MD, associate clinical professor of dermatology at Yale School of Medicine and associate director of clinical trials at Central Connecticut Dermatology Research, highlighted several ongoing debates surrounding atopic dermatitis management during an interview at the 

Shahriari, who also serves as the host of 

, had focused her RAD session on the evolving understanding of atopic dermatitis as a systemic disease, the complexities of treatment selection, and the continued role of topical therapies in an increasingly crowded therapeutic landscape.

“I think there's a lot going on in the AD space, but one of the biggest issues we're currently having is defining atopic dermatitis as a systemic disease,” Shahriari explained.

While some clinicians continue to see atopic dermatitis through its cutaneous manifestations, Shahriari noted a growing body of data indicating broader systemic implications. Emerging literature, she expressed, has linked the inflammatory disease to a range of comorbidities and complications. Some of these have included asthma, cardiovascular disease, pregnancy-related concerns, impaired growth in pediatric patients, fertility issues, and the progression of the atopic march.

, Shahriari argued that failure to recognize these systemic dimensions may contribute to undertreatment and delay the use of therapies capable of addressing the broader burden of disease.

The conversation also delved into the increasingly nuanced process of therapy selection in atopic dermatitis, with Shahriari highlighting the extension of treatment decisions far beyond disease severity alone, requiring clinicians to consider patient preferences, comorbid conditions, lifestyle factors, and treatment goals. Shared decision-making, she said, remains central to successful care, particularly when patients express hesitation about biologic or systemic therapies.

While there has been a rapid expansion of biologics, Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors, and other advanced therapies, Shahriari stressed the foundational component of disease management that topical treatments represent. Whether used alone in milder disease or alongside systemic drugs in more severe cases, topicals continue to play an important role throughout a patient’s treatment journey. However, she cautioned that the growing number of highly effective nonsteroidal topical options has also created new challenges. In order to address this issue, Shahriari proposed a more structured framework for defining topical treatment failure, including clearer criteria that could help reduce therapeutic inertia, promote timely escalation of care, and ultimately improve outcomes.

Videos

Mona Shahriari, MD, spoke about the evolving understanding of atopic dermatitis as a systemic disease, the complexities of treatment selection, and more.

The Influence of Physician Role Models on Young Patients, With Lisa Swanson, MD

 explored the lasting influence physicians can have on young patients, particularly through representation, mentorship, and the relationships formed over years of care.

Hosted by Mona Shahriari, MD, associate clinical professor of dermatology at Yale University and practicing dermatologist in Connecticut, the discussion featured Lisa Swanson, MD, a dual board-certified dermatologist and pediatric dermatologist at Ada West Dermatology and St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital in Boise, Idaho.

As the episode drew to a close, Shahriari reflected on one of the unique aspects of caring for children: their ability to bring humor, curiosity, and joy into the clinical setting. She noted that pediatric patients often find delight in seemingly ordinary moments and can help physicians reconnect with a lighter perspective on life. The conversation naturally transitioned into a discussion about the impact physicians may have on young patients who see them not only as healthcare providers but also as role models.

Swanson reflected on her own experience as a child patient, recalling how a dermatologist she admired helped shape her perception of what was possible professionally. Looking back, she recognized the influence that seeing a successful woman physician had on her eventual decision to pursue dermatology herself. That experience, she explained, has made her acutely aware that some of the children she treats today may similarly remember their interactions with her for years to come.

To illustrate that point, Swanson shared the story of a young patient with severe alopecia areata. After receiving treatment and experiencing substantial hair regrowth, the child returned to clinic excited to show off a new haircut. For Swanson, the moment represented far more than a successful therapeutic outcome. The experience became even more meaningful when the child later asked whether she could become a dermatologist someday. Swanson described immediately encouraging the young girl, viewing the interaction as a reminder of the broader influence physicians can have beyond diagnosis and treatment.

Shahriari emphasized that many clinicians may underestimate the significance of their presence in patients’ lives, particularly for children who may view their physicians as heroes. She suggested that representation matters not only in terms of professional achievement but also in demonstrating compassion, confidence, and leadership.

Swanson also reflected on the relationships that develop with pediatric patients and their families over time. She described feeling honored when families mention discussing her outside of clinic visits, seeing those moments as evidence that she has become a meaningful part of their lives.

Together, Shahriari and Swanson concluded that the influence of a physician often extends well beyond medical care, shaping how children view themselves, their futures, and the possibilities available to them.

Swanson L, Shahriari M. The Medical Sisterhood: The Hidden Cost of Being the Compassionate Doctor, With Lisa Swanson MD. HCPLive. May 15, 2026. Accessed June 9, 2026. 

https://www.hcplive.com/view/the-medical-sisterhood-hidden-cost-compassionate-doctor-lisa-swanson-md

This segment of the May episode of The Medical Sisterhood highlights key points regarding the impacts of role models on young patients in dermatology.