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Message from the Chair
The Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics is looking forward to an exciting 2024. In this newsletter, I’d like to highlight the great work of our PhD students, five of whom were recently awarded NIH F grants to support their dissertations. Their topics are quite diverse, ranging from the prediction and prevention of surgical site infections to the effects of state policy on harmful alcohol use. See their topics below; if anything arouses your curiosity, I encourage you to reach out for a discussion. Our students benefit from talking to people about their research. Happy New Year!
– Mark Pletcher
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Katie Pollard receives $1.3 million for The Keck Center for Machine Guided Functional Genomics | Katie Pollard, PhD, received a $1.3 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation for a new center, The Keck Center for Machine Guided Functional Genomics. This project will convert investigators’ early-stage technologies into a robust, open-source platform that the Center will share freely with others to accelerate discovery science and disease research toward more effective clinical diagnostics and therapeutics for genetic disorders. | | |
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First-ever international pooled analysis of uranium workers receives additional funding | The Zablotska Research Group, led by Lydia Zablotska, MD, PhD, MPA, received funding from the Department of Energy to establish a data coordination center at UCSF to support a first-ever international pooled analysis of uranium workers and their long-term health risks. | | |
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Suzanna Martinez deepens commitment to college students’ well-being in new studies | Students can’t learn if they have nothing to eat or nowhere safe to study and sleep. Two newly funded projects led by Suzanna Martinez, PhD, will research students’ essential needs on all UC campuses | | |
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Partnering with providers in Africa to improve maternal care | Patience Afulani, PhD, MD, MPH, is studying the mental well-being of health care providers in Kenya and Ghana and identifying strategies to reduce the effects of implicit and explicit bias. | | |
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New UC center will test approaches to blunt the effects of climate change | The new UC Global Center on Climate Change, Water, Energy, Food, and Health Systems will address the health impacts of climate change in the climate-vulnerable communities of Jordan’s Azraq Basin. Margaret Handley, PhD, MPH, will lead the implementation science component of the research strategy. | | |
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Jean Digitale is a UCSF National Clinician Scholar | Congratulations to PhD candidate Jean Digitale, MPH, RN, who was selected for the UCSF National Clinician Scholars Program, 2024–2026 cohort. Digitale will participate in a two-year fellowship to advance health and health care through scholarship and action. | |
Five PhD students awarded NIH F grants
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Carrie Chan MSN, CPNP, MPH (F31 – NICHD) “PreoP-SSI: Prediction and prevention of pediatric surgical site infections”
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Erin Ferguson, MPH (F31 – NIA) “Evaluating routine clinical decisions in providing primary care for people living with Alzheimer's Disease or Alzheimer's Related Disorders: using electronic health records to provide timely evidence”
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Yusuph Mavura, MS (F99 – NHGRI) – “Assessing Clinical Utility of Polygenic Risk Scores in Ancestrally Diverse Real-World Cohorts”
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Caitlin Turner, MPH (F31 – NIAAA) “Examining differential effects of state equality-promoting policies on harmful alcohol use among sexual and gender minority adults in the U.S.: an econometrics approach for causal inference”
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Jingxuan Wang, MPhil (F99/K00 – NIA) “The Impact of SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Vaccination on the Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias”
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Minh Nguyen, William Chen and Isha Sethi represent the winning team, Living with Meningioma, who won first prize at the 2023 UCSF Eureka Build-a-thon. | |
Eureka Build-a-thon at UCSF | The UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute and Eureka Team co-hosted a day-long Eureka Build-a-thon for UCSF researchers to discover how quick and easy it is to build and host a research study on the Eureka platform. | |
Applications open for the 2024–25 PRISE Center T32 postdoctoral cohort | The Partnerships for Research in Implementation Science for Equity in Heart and Lung Diseases (PRISE-HL) T32 program has three open positions for one-year training slots for implementation science research in NHLBI priority areas (heart, lung, blood and sleep disorders) focusing on health disparities. The deadline to apply is March 1, 2024. | |
Funding available for All of Us research data | The All of Us Research Program is building a dataset to help transform the future of health research by equipping researchers with expansive health data from diverse populations, especially those underrepresented in biomedical research. Funding to use this one-of-a-kind dataset is available to researchers. | |
Newly geocoded patient address data available for research
| DEB’s Population Health Data Initiative (PHDI) helps researchers link electronic health record (EHR) data to neighborhood-level data sources through its UCSF Health Atlas by geocoding patient address data. PHDI has completed geocoding for patient addresses through 2023 in the San Francisco Health Network and UCSF Health, making health equity research using EHR data more accessible and complete for our local population. |
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Info session for Training in Clinical and Epidemiologic Research
January 24, 2024, 6–7 p.m. PST
Become a leader in health research with our master’s, certificate and workshop programs in clinical and epidemiologic research. Learn more at our Jan. 24 info session.
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Info session for Clinical Research Informatics Postdoctoral (CRISP) Fellowship
January 25, 6:30–8 p.m. PST
The CRISP Fellowship provides tailored training for clinician investigators who seek to improve health care through the science of clinical research informatics. Fellows receive a 1- or 2-year stipend for didactic data science and clinical research training starting July 1, 2024. Applications received by April 1 will receive preferential consideration. Learn more at our Jan. 25 info session. Please contact Christian.Leiva@ucsf.edu for an invitation.
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Admissions webinar for Health Data Science master’s and certificate program
January 30, 12–1 p.m. PST
Health data science is a rapidly growing field, and we are the only UC program that trains students in data science and biostatistics with an applied focus in the health sciences. Learn more about our program at our Jan. 30 info session.
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The department is recruiting an IMS/EPI Mixed Methods course director to begin AY 24-25. Details can be found on the careers page of the website. | |
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Congrats to PhD student Caitlin Turner for a National Institutes of Health (NIH) fellowship funding her work examining differential effects of state equality-promoting policies on harmful alcohol use among sexual and gender minority adults.
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#COVID19-related stressors exacerbated food insecurity and depression among grad students receiving campus basic needs services at 7 California public universities
@drSusieMartinez
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