July signals the height of summer, the cautious reopening of our economy and the start of a new academic year. We have shifted leadership in several key areas in the Department, and the departing leaders have left things in great shape for new ones to come in and implement new ideas. We have an impressive class of postdocs and several fantastic new faculty members. Our staff have kept our research and educational program strong throughout the disruptions of the last year and are working towards the next phase of our journey. I look forward to seeing all of these people and projects come to fruition. Thank you all for your fantastic work.
- Kirsten
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Michelle Hsiang, MD, is a malaria epidemiologist and pediatric infectious diseases physician. She joined the department in June from the University of Texas, Southwestern. Her research is to understand the epidemiology of malaria in low transmission and elimination settings and to design and evaluate novel diagnostics, surveillance methods and interventions to lower disease burden. She is director of research for the IGHS Malaria Elimination Initiative and a Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator. She has a secondary appointment in Pediatrics.
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Eva Raphael, MD, MPH, joins us as an assistant professor with a dual appointment in the Department of Family and Community Medicine, where she completed her residency in 2018. Dr. Raphael sees patients in the Refugee Clinic at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Her research focuses on the social and environmental drivers of drug-resistant infections obtained outside the hospital setting. She focuses on urinary tract infections in women –
one of the most common infections they experience – using infectious disease, social and spatial epidemiology methods. Dr. Raphael's other projects include studying disease burden in immigrant populations and social inequities associated with COVID-19 infections in three large healthcare systems.
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Elizabeth Ambriz, DrPH is a postdoctoral fellow working with Jacqueline Torres. Dr. Ambriz will be studying the perception of “successful aging,” knowledge and feelings about Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRDs), and motivations and feelings related to participating in ADRD research among Latinas living in an underserved agricultural community. Her previous work focused on studying local health department and county government practices to address health inequities.
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Hélène Aschmann, formerly a PhD student and postdoc at the University of Zurich, models the benefit-harm balance of interventions to inform patient-centered care. She received a fellowship from Switzerland to work together with Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, Priya Shete and Adithya Cattamanchi, on the question of who benefits from preventive treatment for latent tuberculosis.
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Cathy Samayoa, PhD is a Molecular Cancer Epidemiology T32 postdoctoral fellow working with
Drs. Scarlett Gomez and Salma Sharrif-Marco. Dr. Samayoa will investigate biological pathways and links to breast cancer outcomes among Latinas. Her previous work includes measuring stress, sleep and premature aging biomarkers and developing participant-centered strategies for overcoming barriers to biospecimen collection among Latina breast cancer survivors.
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Theresa Mau, PhD, is a UCSF affiliate with an official appointment at CPMC. Theresa is working with Peggy Cawthorn and Steve Cummings.
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Kendra Sims recently completed her PhD from Oregon State University. She studies social and clinical risk factors of disability. Applying predictive modeling methodologies, she is interested in quantifying disparities in later life health. Dr. Sims will join Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo’s research group examining structural racism and other social and structural factors and their relationship to hypertension control across the life course.
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Congratulations to Kristen Newhouse on her new position as Executive Assistant to Dr. Talmadge King, Dean of the School of Medicine! Kristen has been an invaluable member of the Department, serving as the executive assistant to both our current chair Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo and past chair Bob Hiatt. As everyone who interacts with Kristen knows, she is extraordinarily talented, creative, and effective in her role, deeply committed to the Department’s mission and a true pleasure to work with. The Dean’s Office's gain is DEB’s loss,
but we wish her well in this important new role!
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Alice Fishman, MS, is retiring. Since 2018, Alice has played a key role in many Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics initiatives. Her primary role was program manager for the Population Health and Health Equity hub, but Alice was instrumental in the successful launch and implementation of department initiatives including “One Big Idea” funding opportunities and the Mock Study Section Program. During the pandemic, Alice’s impeccable project management and commitment to an equitable COVID response enabled much of our community-based work. Alice is enjoying a one-month semi-retirement and will be returning on recall to continue her COVID-related work through the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations.
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We are bidding farewell to Assistant Professor Brittany Chambers, PhD who has contributed rigorous, person-centered research on the effects of structural racism on Black birthing people and their babies. She is moving just up the road to UC Davis, where she will join the human ecology department. We hope she'll stay in touch.
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Michael Kohn, MD, MPP, is retiring this month and will return on recall. Dr. Kohn was an emergency physician at San Francisco General Hospital until 2000, when a mid-career fellowship in the Advanced Training in Clinical Research Certificate Program brought him to our Department. In his recalled role, Dr. Kohn will continue to direct the clinical epidemiology Epi 204 course, co-lead the seminar for second-year master’s students and provide consultations to UCSF clinical investigators through the Clinical and Translation Science Institute. He will also take on new work with Stanford’s clinical research training program, including teaching Stanford's course, Evaluating Technologies for Diagnosis, Prediction, and Screening.
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Dominic Montagu, DrPH, is retiring and returning on recall. Dr. Montagu started working at IGHS in 2002 and formally joined our Department the following year. In recall, he will work on a multi-country abortion quality indicator study and continue to teach in the IGHS doctoral program. He will also expand his outside work with NGOs and serve on advisories for WHO and the World Bank.
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From left to right: New TICR co-directors Alexis Beatty, MD, MAS, and Elaine Ku, MD, MAS, and outgoing TICR director Jeff Martin, MD, MPH. |
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TICR Leadership Change
As of this month, after 15 years of dedicated leadership Jeff Martin, MD, MPH, will be transitioning out of the role of director for the Training in Clinical Research programs (MAS, ATCR, summer workshop) and turning the reins over to Alexis Beatty, MD, MAS, and Elaine Ku, MD, MAS, who will serve as the new co-directors of TICR.
Dr. Beatty, an alum of our MAS program, is a cardiologist who researches digital health. She joined the department in early 2020 from Apple Health. Dr. Ku is an adult and pediatric nephrologist and epidemiologist whose research focuses on health disparities in kidney disease. Together, they hope to build upon the strengths of the TICR program to continue to train high-quality clinical investigators and future leaders in epidemiology and clinical research.
The Department is grateful to Jeff for his many dedicated years of educational leadership of TICR. Jeff put in countless hours to ensure that every aspect of the TICR program was excellent. His work grew the program, attracting higher enrollment and students with varied professional backgrounds. Jeff has been a champion for training clinicians and other learners in rigorous research methods, and alumni of the TICR programs are improving health nationally and internationally.
Jeff also steered the program through a host of challenges. As epidemiology underwent a sea change in how it approached causation, Jeff completely revamped the curriculum from the methods courses on up.
Thanks to Jeff, we were ahead of the curve in moving education online. When the pandemic hit, Jeff had long since built a course management system well ahead of its time. He had also moved course content – including recorded lectures, slides, homework and laboratory exercises – online. Jeff also has a passion for delivering content to underdeveloped countries. Using his course infrastructure, we have led courses with discussion sections all over the world.
Jeff is currently head of the Clinical Epidemiology Division, and his departure from TICR will allow him to spend more time on that role.
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This fall, the Implementation Science program will offer a Human-Centered Design course as part of the online certificate for the first time. Registration is open now for our three fall courses (Human-Centered Design, Introduction to Implementation Science Theory and Design, Community-Engaged Research).
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Faculty awards and honors |
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Chuck McCulloch will deliver the Lowell Reed Lecture at the 2021 American Public Health Association Annual Meeting in October, whose theme is “Creating the Healthiest Nation: Strengthening Social Connectedness.” The lecture is given every year by a statistician who has contributed significantly to public health through research, teaching and/or service.
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Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, PhD, MD, MAS is beginning a $1.5-million CDC award on July 1 to work jointly with the San Francisco Department of Public Health to strengthen the infrastructure that links our community, public health, and clinical ecosystem to ensure timely responses to the crisis of the pandemic, as well as sustainable responses to address the ongoing health needs of our most vulnerable San Franciscans. Faculty within the PRISE Center will spearhead the program’s evaluation and provide technical expertise.
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Margaret Handley published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, highlighting the unique pandemic-era struggles of female junior faculty and calling for equity-oriented programs to diversify department leadership, promote bias training, increase peer mentoring and formalize advancement and salary equity reviews.
Tom Newman received, for the second year in a row, a Special Recognition Certificate from the American Academy of Pediatrics for his teaching.
Lydia Zablotska contributed to a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report, funded by NASA, to evaluate its current space radiation exposure policies.
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Highlights from the website |
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Administrative codes inaccurately identify recurrent venous thromboembolism: The CVRN VTE study.
Christine Baumgartner, Alan S Go, Dongjie Fan, Sue Hee Sung, Daniel M Witt, John R Schmelzer, Marc S Williams, Steven H Yale, Jeffrey J VanWormer, Margaret C Fang
Thromb Res. 2020 May.
Alzheimer's disease research progress in Australia: The Alzheimer's Association International Conference Satellite Symposium in Sydney.
Claire E. Sexton, Kaarin J. Anstey, Filippo Baldacci, C. J. Barnum, … Rachel Whitmer, Donna Wilcock, Tien Y. Wong, Lisa J. Bain, Maria C. Carrillo.
Alz Dement, 2021 May.
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Area Characteristics and Consumer Nutrition Environments in Restaurants: an Examination of Hispanic Caribbean Restaurants in New York City
Melissa Fuster, Hanish Kodali, Krishnendu Ray, Brian Elbel, Margaret A Handley, Terry T-K Huang, Glen Johnson.
J Racial Ethn Health Disparities. 2021 Jun 21.
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