Gastroenterologist and social media star Dr. Austin Chiang ’07 has always trusted his gut.
Chiang was born and raised in Irvine, California, where he lived as an only child with his parents until his family moved to Taiwan at age 10. While he had a grandfather who was a surgeon, neither of his parents practiced medicine, so pursuing a career in healthcare was never on Chiang’s radar as a child.
Years later, as a high school student at an American school in Taiwan, Chiang applied to Duke sight-unseen, knowing only that it was a well-regarded school with a good basketball team. It proved to be the right move for him: At Duke, he homed in on a passion for biology. When his pre-med friends hunkered down one summer to study for the MCAT – the medical college admission test – he decided to join them, almost on a whim. Again, it proved to be a winning strategy. He took the test and scored well, landing a spot at Columbia University’s medical school where, after much deliberation, he decided to pursue gastroenterology.
“I like that there’s a wide variety of different organ systems that we work with,” Chiang explains. “And there’s a lot of technological advancements happening, yet it’s still procedural. It ended up being a great fit for me.”
It was while he was in medical school that Chiang noticed patients coming in for treatment citing concerns about medical misinformation they were hearing from the media. Ignited by an interest in how important healthcare information was being communicated in media, Chiang started a Twitter account. In the beginning, it was simply a place for him to share what he was learning at medical conferences. His following began to grow – much to the chagrin of some of his peers and mentors.
“At the beginning, people were making fun of me,” Chiang shares. “The faculty I was working with were saying I should get off the Internet because it was embarrassing.”
Chiang again trusted his instincts, sensing that social media could be the new frontier of public health, and stuck with it. He was among the first wave of medical influencers active on TikTok, where he now boasts more than half a million followers. And while it would be easy for Chiang to lean solely on social media as a career, he has purposefully never taken a brand deal in order to ensure that he always remains objective.
Chiang also has never been content to pin himself down to just one pursuit. With a home base now in New York City, he balances his medical influencer work on social media with his busy schedule as the chief medical officer in endoscopy for Medtronic, an innovative health care technology manufacturer – all while fitting in a few days a month to travel to practice with patients. Chiang is still on faculty at a teaching hospital in Pennsylvania.
In his sliver of spare time, he recently authored a book – “Gut: An Owner’s Guide,” which combines important gastroenterology information with fun, eye-catching illustrations. Chiang gives readers details on topics such as what patients might expect when they arrive at a hospital for a procedure, as well as what common gut health symptoms might mean, all in easy-to-understand terminology.
Among his many accolades, Chiang was nominated in 2021 for GLAAD’s “TikTok Queer Advocate of the Year.” He says he never expected to be an advocate in the LGBTQ+ space, but after being recognized as 1 of 25 “LGBTQ Trailblazers” by TikTok in 2020, Chiang began to embrace his role as an influencer. Helping his teammates at Medtronic, as well as his huge social media following, celebrate their true selves is now a central pillar to his work.
“There have been so many moments where I wished I had someone to look up to, and where I wished I had known that I could pursue a certain career path,” he shares. “I thought to myself that if this helps anybody; if somebody can see themselves in what I’m doing, I should put myself out there – even if it’s just one person that I’m helping out.”