Liver Disease

Jonathan Stine, MD, MSc, FACP, is an associate professor of medicine and public health science at Penn State in State College, Pennsylvania.

As an internationally recognized liver expert with a research and clinical focus on metabolic dysfunction–associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) and exercise, he has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, including multinational consensus guidelines.

Dr. Stine is the recipient of multiple research grants and awards from the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the American Cancer Society, and has maintained continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health since 2018.

Stine is the MASLD consultant to the American College of Sports Medicine’s “Exercise is Medicine” initiative, and recently co-chaired the International Roundtable on MASLD and Physical Activity for ACSM. He serves as the Fatty Liver Program director as well as the Liver Center Research director for Penn State.

Allison Buttarazzi, MD, is board-certified in internal medicine and lifestyle medicine, and is a certified health and well-being coach. In her primary care practice, Dr. Buttarazzi focuses on lifestyle medicine to help her patients improve their health and longevity, and her passion is helping patients prevent and reverse chronic diseases (like heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes) by improving their lifestyle habits.

She is a graduate of Tufts University School of Medicine and completed a residency at Maine Medical Center. Diagnosed with celiac disease during medical school, she realized the power of improving one's health through diet and lifestyle habits, which she later incorporated into her practice.

Ira Daniel Breite, MD, is a board-certified internist and gastroenterologist. He is an associate professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he also sees patients and helps run an ambulatory surgery center.

Dr. Breite divides his time between technical procedures, reading about new topics, and helping patients with some of their most intimate problems. He finds the deepest fulfillment in the long-term relationships he develops and is thrilled when a patient with irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease improves on the regimen he worked with them to create.

Breite went to Albert Einstein College of Medicine for medical school, followed by a residency at NYU and Bellevue Hospital and a gastroenterology fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Working in city hospitals helped him become resourceful and taught him how to interact with people from different backgrounds.

Marina Serper, MD, MS, is a transplant hepatologist, an associate professor of medicine in gastroenterology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, and staff physician at the Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center in Philadelphia.

Dr. Serper's research focuses on investigating barriers to access and high quality care for patients with liver disease; designing behavioral and health-system interventions utilizing health technology to improve care delivery and outcomes in chronic liver disease and liver transplantation; and evaluating how health literacy, medication understanding, and cognitive function affect medication adherence, self-care and health outcomes.