Doctor Hoo:
Siobhán Statuta, MD

Above: Siobhan Statuta, MD (second from left) with members of the medical staff at El Campin Stadium during the 2024 Women’s U-20 World Cup, where the US Women’s Team won bronze.

Siobhán Statuta, MD, Res ‘10, Fel ‘11, grew up in the small town of Cobleskill, NY. The youngest of four children to her immigrant parents – an Irish father and Venezuelan mother – she focused on academics, not sports, because her parents wanted their children to be family-oriented and thought sports required too much time.

After high school, she attended SUNY Cobleskill and Cornell University, earning an undergraduate degree in biology. She then decided that she wanted to go to medical school. Her parents were against a career in medicine because they thought it would dominate her life. Statuta, however, was determined.

Prior to applying to medical school, Statuta decided to take a break from schooling and get some work experience to see if medicine was really what she wanted to pursue. This proved to be challenging, however. Unable to find a job in the local hospital, Statuta spent time working as a health club consultant and personal trainer to build her resumé. A connection with a club member led to a job working in the office of an orthopedic surgeon as a medical assistant. “My job was rooming patients, collecting histories, and determining if they needed X-rays ahead of time. It was exciting to get face-to-face experiences with patients and make medical decisions,” she says. “During lunches, I would run upstairs to the outpatient surgery center, and I’d watch cases through the windows. The surgeons noticed and decided, ‘Let’s train her to do this,’ so I became a scrub tech. I would have been happy there my entire life. It was so much fun.”

The surgeons Statuta worked for had other plans. They saw her potential and staged what she calls an “intervention,” and she was told she had six months to apply to medical school. “It was crazy, but that was the kick that I needed,” she recalls. “I applied and took my MCATs, and I got into medical school at George Washington University.”

It was during her time in Washington, DC, that Statuta first became acquainted with Charlottesville during weekend getaways. “I saw UVA and I absolutely fell in love with the area. I had gone to Cornell, and I really enjoyed the town of Ithaca, which has a very similar feel. Ithaca is the Charlottesville of the north, I think, with a similar pedestrian mall, historical buildings, and a gorgeous mountainous backdrop” she says. “When I interviewed at UVA, I thought, ‘This is my place.’”

There was one problem: she and her husband, Jason, had made a deal that would let him choose where’d they go next after their time in DC. In the end, the draw of UVA won him over, and when Statuta matched in family medicine at UVA, Charlottesville became their new home.

Although she had considered orthopedics for residency, Statuta decided on family medicine as a path to her ultimate goal: primary care sports medicine. Having seen firsthand the demands of a career as an orthopedic surgeon, she believed that a non-surgical specialty in sports medicine would provide her with a better work-life balance and suited her love of getting to know people’s stories. It would also give her exposure to patients ranging from infants to the geriatric population. Even her former co-workers in New York agreed that family medicine was a great path.

Statuta says that when she interviewed at UVA, the idea of creating a primary care sports medicine fellowship was discussed. But in her second year of residency, the fellowship was still just that: an idea.

“At that point, it became my pet project. With the support of my residency director, I brainstormed what the ideal fellowship would look like, gathered all required forms and signatures, garnered support, and then submitted it with fingers crossed,” she recalls. “It was accepted, and I became the first fellow to complete the program.”

Statuta describes her fellowship year as “magical” for all the opportunities she had. “Because I was the first person to go through this fellowship, I created the year that I wanted. I think this is where maturity helped because I had been out in the work force. I knew I did not need excessive orthopedic or surgical training because I already had such extensive experience from having assisted in the clinics and OR for so long. This allowed me to tailor my focus on other areas that I wanted to bolster or experience out of curiosity.”

When she finished the fellowship, she became the program’s director. She also took on a rare opportunity to serve as one of UVA’s two primary care team physicians for its Division 1 athletes. Her additional responsibilities included seeing patients in the family medicine clinic and joining the staff of UVA’s Runner’s Clinic.

In recent years, Statuta has stepped away from family medicine to focus primarily on athletics, whether students or patients from the local community. She has also gotten involved in the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM) and American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). Those national networks have opened up unpredictable opportunities, including a role for Statuta as a team physician for the U-20 U.S. Women’s Soccer team for the past three years. This fall, the team traveled to Colombia for the World Cup, and Statuta was one of the team physicians supporting the athletes. “What I absolutely love about this unique opportunity to travel with these young ladies is that I really get to know them well over the span of years,” she says. “I become a friendly and recognizable entity to them. I’m not a fresh doctor who’s just rolling in to cover a singular sporting event.”

Statuta says the training she received at UVA and her primary care background have served her well. “I do a ton of work with women athletes, including those with eating disorders. There’s a large interest also directed towards the mental health of athletes at all levels,” she says. “I truly enjoy taking a comprehensive approach to each and every athlete.”

Today, Statuta has two children who are both involved in their own sports yet love the role their mom plays with teams at UVA and the national level. She says that her parents, too, quickly came to appreciate her chosen career path once they saw how thrilled she was in med school. “They used to say, ‘We may have been wrong. You have definitely found your niche,’ and then call me frequently with medical questions,” she jokes.

And the primary care sports medicine fellowship she created? Under her direction, the program received ACGME accreditation and continues to accept one new fellow each year. The fellowship is considered one of the top programs in the country, boasting a 100% board pass rate. In 2024, there were 149 applicants for the position.

Statuta, who was awarded a full professorship this year, says she is grateful to her husband and children for supporting her career and travels, as well as to UVA. “I cannot tell you how encouraging my chairs have been. I came through my UVA training like a fire hose on full blast, saying, ‘I want to do this, I want to do that, I want to do this.’ And somehow, my attendings and chairs always come through with full backing. It is amazing,” she says. “I’m truly humbled by all these people seeing something in me that I didn’t.”