Karen L. Herbst, MD, PhD

Karen L. Herbst, MD, PhD, is Head of Research and Director of Diagnostic and Preventative Medicine at The Roxbury Institute, where she directs diagnostic and preventative medicine at the Tucson, Arizona center. She also leads the institute's research division, which explores new treatment methods and develops products. She is a board-certified endocrinologist. She holds a PhD in cell physiology from the University of Iowa and completed a Howard Hughes Fellowship at the University of Utah. Her career spans more than two decades and includes faculty posts at Martin Luther King Drew Medical Center/UCLA, the VA San Diego Health Care System/UCSD and the University of Arizona, where she led the TREAT program focused on adipose tissue and metabolism.

Her work centers on lipedema, Dercum's disease and other diseases of adipose connective tissue, including lymphatic, vascular, metabolic and hormonal factors. Her expertise also covers advanced diagnostics, CVAC treatments, Madelung's disease, and fat disorders and metabolic medicine, including GLP-1s. She serves as Vice President of the Lipedema World Alliance. She led an NIH-sponsored conference in 2019 aimed at setting a standard of care for lipedema in the United States, and in 2020 she was involved in introducing new ICD-10 codes at the CDC. She works closely with David Amron, MD, on the Advanced Lipedema Treatment program, addressing research gaps, developing therapies and applying clinical findings to patient care.

Her practitioner page lists a Lifetime Achievement Award from Tucson Business in 2019 and names her one of America's top physicians. She has given keynote presentations at the Lipedema World Congress in Rome in 2025, the Fat Disorders Research Society conference in Atlanta in 2024, and the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery annual meeting in 2024. She was featured as an expert in a 2023 Wall Street Journal article on lipedema and covered in a 2020 Los Angeles Times article on lipedema treatment. She is also the author of a guide to liposculpture and lipedema surgery for patients and surgeons, listed as an Amazon best seller in 2023.