Kartik Kailas Venkatesh, MD, PhD

Dr. Venkatesh is a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist, maternal-fetal medicine specialist, and PhD epidemiologist. He is an associate professor with tenure in obstetrics and gynecology and epidemiology. He is the director of the Diabetes in Pregnancy Program based at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, one of the oldest and largest integrated diabetes and prenatal care programs in the United States. He sees pregnant patients with diabetes every week.

In the Division of Maternal Fetal Medicine, Dr. Venkatesh leads the Perinatal Epidemiology Program focused on addressing the impact of social determinants on cardiometabolic health in pregnancy. He is the principle investigator of three federally-funded studies: 1) NIH’s ECHO Ohio prospective longitudinal cohort examining the impact of maternal cardiometabolic health on long-term child neurodevelopment (UG3); 2) AHRQ’s ACHIEVE RCT studying the impact of continuous glucose monitoring, mobile applications, and addressing social needs on glycemic control for Medicaid-insured pregnant individuals with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes (R01); 3) PCORI’s DECIDE, a comparative effectiveness, patient-centered RCT, defining whether metformin is non-inferior to insulin for prevention of adverse pregnancy outcomes and safe through two years postpartum among individuals with gestational diabetes and their exposed infants at 20 U.S. centers.

Dr. Venkatesh has published more than 150 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts focused on diabetes in pregnancy, adverse pregnancy outcomes and perinatal infectious diseases. He has methodological expertise in clinical trials, prospective cohorts, and clinical prediction models. As a physician-scientist, Dr. Venkatesh’s overarching goal is to improve pregnancy outcomes for all individuals living with diabetes using innovative approaches that integrate clinical trials, perinatal epidemiology and precision medicine.