Assistant Clinical Professor

Department of Dermatology
UC Davis School of Medicine
3301 C Street, Suite 1400
Sacramento, CA 95816
Phone: (916) 734-1267
Fax: (916) 442-5702

April W. Armstrong, MD, MPH, is a board-certified, academic dermatologist with expertise in clinical and outcomes research. She is an Assistant Professor of Dermatology, Director of the Dermatology Clinical Research Unit, and Director of Teledermatology at University of California Davis.

“We can no longer put blind faith in expert opinions or anecdotes. This skepticism is necessary to advance clinical and translational research. We shall gather best clinical evidence to critically evaluate how our interventions affect patients’ disease and their overall well-being.”

Dr. Armstrong graduated high honors with Bachelor of Arts degrees in both Biochemistry and Communication from Lewis & Clark College. She obtained her M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School, where she was also awarded the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Clinical Research Fellowship to study tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in melanoma. After medical school, she served as an intern in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Armstrong completed her dermatology residency at the Harvard Dermatology Residency Program. Dr. Armstrong also completed a Clinical Research Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. She was twice the recipient of the American Telemedicine Association Teledermatology Resident Award, a national award for innovative research in health technology. Dr. Armstrong also obtained her M.P.H. degree from the Harvard School of Public Health, with a focus on clinical effectiveness.

Dr. Armstrong is the recipient of a federal K08 Career Development Award from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Dr. Armstrong was also selected to receive the Dermatology Foundation Career Development Award in Healthcare Policy as well as the Mentored Career Development Award from the Clinical and Translational Science Center at University of California Davis.

Dr. Armstrong was a founding editor for a major pharmacology textbook, Principles of Pharmacology: The Pathophysiologic Basis of Drug Therapy. For the past decade, she has been an associate editor for all editions of the textbook and authored many chapters. This medical textbook has become a leading pharmacology textbook among U.S. medical schools and has been translated into 5 different languages.

Dr. Armstrong provides real-time, videoconference-based teledermatology consultations as well as store-and-forward consultations to 31 rural sites in California. By October 2009, she has performed over 1500 real-time teledermatology consultations to patients in Massachusetts and California. Dr. Armstrong is active in the Teledermatology Special Interest Group of the American Telemedicine Association and Telemedicine Task Force of the American Academy of Dermatology.