August 2023

Hello DEB colleagues!

In our newsletter this month, we’re welcoming a new faculty member and celebrating some interesting new funded projects, awards and leadership positions that will keep us at the forefront of research methods, population health and health equity here at UCSF and worldwide. Take a moment to read about your colleagues and celebrate our successes.

I hope you are all enjoying summer! See you at Mission Hall.

Mark Pletcher, MD, MPH

Mara Decker, DrPH, received a 5-year grant from the Office of Population Affairs to improve the health equity and well-being of adolescents in rural Fresno County by replicating evidence-based programming, expanding access to services, and engaging youth and other stakeholders. The project includes partnerships with local organizations.

Maternal and child health work with Indigenous groups

Decker also received an award from the Health Resources and Services Administration to complete secondary analyses of the National Survey of Family Growth data to examine systemic inequities in maternal and child health among American Indians and Alaska Natives. The work includes consultation with a Native research advisory group and involves Native mentee faculty.

Nadia Diamond-Smith, PhD, MS, received a second grant from the Vaccine Confidence Fund to use a community-engaged process to understand perceptions about childhood vaccination in rural Guatemala. The research will adapt social media content from a previous grant focused on COVID-19 to address all childhood vaccination and to support community health workers to address vaccine hesitancy in their communities.

UC-wide research on Indigenous health

As part of a multi-campus, multi-disciplinary research team, Diamond-Smith also received funding from the University of California to create a research collaborative that will lead new research and mentoring initiatives at UCSF, UC Santa Cruz and UC Merced exploring how social networks affect the health of Native Americans and Indigenous migrants from Latin America.

Laura Jelliffe-Pawlowski, PhD, MS, and her team received funding in the first round of the California Collaborative for Pandemic Recovery and Readiness Research (CPR³) program for their project, “Digital cognitive behavioral therapy (dCBT) for anxiety during pregnancy: evaluation and actioning through HOPE.” The randomized controlled trial will evaluate the efficacy and acceptability of dCBT for reducing anxiety symptoms in pregnant people. By examining both the efficacy and acceptability of this therapy, the team may be able to ensure that more people get treatment, which could help reduce the rates of anxiety and related adverse outcomes like preterm birth.

Jelliffe-Pawlowski was also honored in the Forbes 50 over 50 in Innovation for her startup, EGG Health Pregnancy. The startup launched in 2022 and provides pregnant people and new parents with personalized health data.

Kala Mehta, DSc, MPH, and her team received funding in the first round of the state-funded California Collaborative for Pandemic Recovery and Readiness Research (CPR³) program for a project entitled “The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children and adolescents (including health and social determinants of health), and the role of intersecting social, structural, and economic factors at household and community levels.” The project will document how a youth mobilizer program, started during the COVID-19 pandemic, helped young people stay in school, improved their knowledge of local health resources and addressed social needs. This effort was part of Umoja Health, which Kim Rhoads, MD, MPH, founded during the pandemic. 

Erin Van Blarigan, ScD, will be principal investigator on a pilot prostate cancer award called "Eating Better Together: Developing a dyadic dietary intervention for prostate cancer patients and their partners.” The study will include interviews and focus groups followed by beta-testing a month-long proof-of-concept intervention. June Chan ScD, and Stacey Kenfield ScD, are co-investigators.

Deaths among older adults with dementia fell starkly in nursing homes and long-term care centers after COVID-19 vaccinations became available, yet remained high for those living at home, according to a new study led by Rujia Chen, ScD, and Maria Glymour, ScD.

Scarlett Gomez, MPH, PhD, was selected as the 2023 recipient of the Christopher N.H. Jenkins Award, which is given annually to someone who has made significant accomplishments in community-oriented cancer prevention and control efforts for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Gomez’s nomination noted the impact of her contributions to cancer data collection, research on multi-level drivers of cancer health disparities and mentorship.

Yulin Hswen, ScD, MPH, became an associate editor in artificial intelligence (AI) and medicine at JAMA, where she will help guide the strategic direction for JAMA and the JAMA Network. 

Alka Kanaya, MD, received the 2023 Kelly West Award for Outstanding Achievement in Epidemiology from the American Diabetes Association. The award recognizes significant contributions to the field of diabetes epidemiology. Kanaya's clinical research focuses on the causes and prevention of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Several members of the department attended the Society for Epidemiologic Research (SER) on June 13 in Portland, Oregon. The SER conference represents the leading edge of the field of epidemiology, and our DEB members and our trainees made critical contributions with posters and presentations.

The world's largest and most diverse genomic dataset has been released by the All of Us Research Program, of which Robert Hiatt, MD, PhD, is the UCSF site principal investigator. With nearly 250,000 whole genome sequences and information from surveys, electronic health records, physical measurements and Fitbit devices, the All of Us dataset empowers researchers to study genetic variations, identify disease risks and personalize health-related DNA results for participants. More than 85% of participants are people underrepresented in medical research, including about half by race and ethnicity. Learn about the program's secure Researcher Workbench, which already has more than 5,000 users.

Five of our PhD students won competitive Graduate Division Fellowships this year:

Carolyn Smith-Hughes, Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Scholarship

Jean Digitale, Fletcher Jones Fellowship

Sirena Gutierrez, Graduate Research Mentorship Fellowship

Elisabeth Gebreegzhiabher, Lloyd M. Kozloff Fellowship

Shelley DeVost, UC President’s Pre-Professoriate Fellowship

Many congratulations to each!

TICR MAS Thesis Awards



The Training in Clinical Research (TICR) program has selected its 2023 MAS Thesis Award recipients: First place went to Katherine Sanders for her thesis, “Structured discharge documentation reduces sex-based disparities in statin prescription in vascular surgery patients,” and the runner-up was Caroline Melhado for her thesis, “Functional impairment associated with non-fatal pediatric firearm injuries.” Congratulations!

The TICR program thanks all students for their submissions and Lydia Zablotska (Chair), Susan Buchbinder, Tom Newman and Vinay Prasad for serving on the Award Review Committee this year.

TICR Excellence in Teaching Award



Safyer McKenzie-Sampson, PhD, won the 2023 Excellence in Teaching Award based on student nominations.

Nominators said:

“Safyer was clear, well-prepared and approachable. A few times during lecture, she would bring up examples of past students' work and the developments they had made in their research on racial disparities using tools from class. It was apparent she was involved with her students and proud to see them progress. I feel empowered and mobilized to use research to bolster communities, and Safyer helped to spark this passion within me.”

“I was grappling with how to adjust my analytical approach to incorporate the important concepts related to appropriately studying social determinants of health, and Safyer was happy to set aside extra time to meet to discuss these important concepts. It makes a real difference for students.”

TICR Excellence in Faculty Advising Award

Hilary Seligman, MD, MAS, won the 2023 Excellence in Faculty Advising based on student nominations.

Nominators said:

“Dr. Seligman provides insightful and thoughtful feedback on work and has provided me advice on maximizing my efforts through courses. She also has connected me with others in the UCSF community and is a sounding board for creative approaches to disseminating research.”

“Dr. Seligman exhibits the ideal triad for academic advising: she is kind, she is holistic in her approach to her mentee, and she is pragmatic. She helps to distill the next best steps into an achievable to‐do list. [She provides] guidance and support to a community of trainees from diverse backgrounds. Her willingness to provide academic support alongside anecdotes of her own experiences as a clinician, researcher and parent provides a feeling of ‘yes, I can do this’ that is otherwise hard to come by.”

Fall courses include Intro to IMS Theory and Design, Community-Engaged Research, and Human-Centered Design. Most content is delivered asynchronously, with weekly synchronous meetings, via Zoom.

Fall courses include Designing Clinical Research, Epidemiologic Methods, and Programming for Health Data Sciences.

Please join us in welcoming a new faculty member, Samira Soleimanpour, PhD, MPH. Soleimanpour started in the department on July 1 as an associate professor in the Division of Lifecourse Epidemiology, and her home unit is in the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies. Soleimanpour has been with the Institute for Health Policy Studies since 2000, first as a research analyst and, starting in 2016, as non-academic faculty after she obtained a PhD. Soleimanpour has led child and adolescent health research and evaluation projects at the Institute. Her primary research interest is how school environments and health services affect children’s health care access and health outcomes. She focuses on school-based health centers and mental health services and has a special interest in community-based participatory research. Working with the California Department of Education, Soleimanpour is the principal investigator of several statewide school health initiative evaluations; she also researches school-based health centers at the local and national levels. Soleimanpour is committed to the translation of research and evaluation findings into policies and programs that improve children’s health and educational outcomes. Soleimanpour has two kids and a dog, Lucy. She loves hiking, traveling and all types of puzzles. 

September 22, 2023, 9:30 a.m.– 2 p.m.



The workshop will include presentations on ongoing research and training opportunities within the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, with topics such as cancer surveillance, cancer health disparities and inequities, and varying exposure types and cancers. Interactive roundtable sessions with faculty will focus on professional development. Trainees with any level of experience and those from other educational institutions are welcome.

The Epidemiology and Biostatistics primary faculty published 78 articles in June and July.

More important work from @KristineYaffe (with postdoc @CDintica as first author) narrowing down how & why #ADRD Alzheimer's disease disproportionately affects marginalized groups.

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CNRI / Science Source

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@NPR it's big news, @markjpletcher , Jill Hollenbach & Jeffrey N. Martin!

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