Hello DEB Colleagues –
In our March newsletter, we’re featuring three DEB faculty members – Mi-Ok Kim, Tony Capra, and Laura Jelliffe-Pawlowski – who are taking on new leadership roles for the department. You can read more about them below and in the linked articles. Please join me in thanking Mi-Ok, Tony and Laura for their service, and send us your ideas for how to make DEB a great place to work.
Meanwhile, your work, new projects and accolades continue to inspire me! Thank you for sending us your news and for doing such great work.
– Mark
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Mi-Ok Kim, PhD, has held leadership roles at UCSF since she arrived in 2016. From the start, she has been director of the biostatistics shared resource core at the Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center. In 2020, she added a role as chief of the division of biostatistics when Chuck McCulloch became vice chair for operations. Now, Mi-Ok is adding the role of vice chair for finance. We spoke to her to learn about her approach to leadership and biostatistics. We found her funny, modest and incredibly passionate about her work. Check out our interview on the website.
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“I may not know or have the skills to help with every aspect of a problem, so I try to have a web of collaboration rather than a wheel of spokes where I’m at the center. And when I’m wrong, I try to emphasize it, so mentees know they shouldn’t take anything I say as gospel.”
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“If you ask me what my superpower is, I think a lot of the people that work with me would say I like getting people together with different perspectives and areas of work to bring out the ideas of others. I see this as my primary role going forward.”
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Robert Hiatt will lead – with Stanford and UC Davis co-PIs – a five-year, eight-figure project to address cancer inequities in Northern California. In a natural experiment, the researchers will study the effects of economic support from state-guaranteed basic income and federal earned income tax credit programs on modifiable risk factors and intermediate outcomes for colorectal cancer. The team will also develop a mathematical model to predict the long-term impacts of income-focused interventions on cancer incidence in areas characterized as being in persistent poverty. The researchers also expect that innovative cancer prevention and control approaches and a diverse pipeline of cancer researchers will emerge. Scarlett Gomez and Travis Porco are also part of the research team.
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Pamela Murnane was named one of this year’s Dean’s Population Health and Health Equity Scholars. The award recognizes her work on preventing the transmission of HIV from mom to baby in resource-constrained settings, specifically Kenya. Read more about Pam's work on the website.
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The U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements released a report summarizing four years of work led by Lydia Zablotska on the differences in risks of lung cancer after radiation exposures for males and females. The report reviewed available evidence and modeled lung cancer risk projections for astronauts, in particular for long-term trips to Mars.
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Peggy Reynolds has a new contract with the California EPA, called “Exposure Biomonitoring for FRESSCA-Mujeres.” This work aims to reduce indoor and outdoor air pollution exposures in a vulnerable population of low-income women who work outdoors and reside in a high-pollution area in California’s Central Valley.
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Kim Rhoads is being honored as an innovator for equity by the Marcus Foster Education Initiative, named for the first Black superintendent of Oakland schools. To honor the 100th anniversary of Foster's birth, the Initiative is recognizing 100 community leaders who support the well-being of students and families from historically marginalized communities. The top 10 awardees will be honored with scholarships in their name, and we can vote for Kim on the website!
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Mara Decker received a RAP Pilot for Anti-Racism Research grant for a project collaborating with Native scholars to measure the associations among American Indians and Alaska Natives of sexual and reproductive health indicators – including access to care, sexual violence, and maternal and infant health – with experiences of systemic racism.
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Thanks to the DEI committee's focus on increasing the diversity of researchers within the Department across all levels, NIH diversity supplements have been awarded to:
NIH diversity supplements are intended to improve the diversity of the research workforce by recruiting and supporting post-baccalaureate, predoctoral students, post-doctorates and eligible investigators from groups that have been shown to be underrepresented in health-related research. Interested in applying one to your NIH grant? Contact Dara Torgerson.
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The implementation science short course is coming up on May 12 and 15. This two-day course, held in an online interactive format, provides a one-of-a-kind opportunity for learners to advance their understanding of the growing field of implementation science while simultaneously advancing their own work and research ideas in this space. CME credit is available. Contact Laura Branagan for details.
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Two or three high school students from The Academy and Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts will visit the Department in March, April and May. Students will explore the field of epidemiology, get to know DEB faculty and staff, and work on a capstone project. Would you or someone on your team be willing to host one afternoon, from 1:30-4:30 p.m.? You might:
- have students shadow you for an afternoon and/or meet with your team;
- teach them a skill or share your research;
- have them work on a social media post about your research;
- have them work on a small project or idea that would benefit your research.
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What excites you about your work?
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Join us March 15 at 3 p.m. for a talk by Karandeep Singh, MD, MMSc, of the University of Michigan: "Reproducibility and Generalizability of Risk Prediction Models." This is a virtual event.
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Health educator
The Department is seeking a health educator to work with the cancer center providing culturally tailored, linguistically appropriate information to Spanish-speaking communities.
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Abuogi LL, Kulzer JL, Akama E, Shade SB et al.
Adapt for adolescents: Protocol for a sequential multiple assignment randomized trial to improve retention and viral suppression among adolescents and young adults living with HIV in Kenya.
Contemp Clin Trials. 2023;127:107123.
Sedlander E, Dahal M, Bingenheimer JB, ... Diamond-Smith NG.
Adapting and Validating the G-NORM (Gender Norms Scale) in Nepal: An Examination of How Gender Norms Are Associated with Agency and Reproductive Health Outcomes.
Stud Fam Plann. Published online January 30, 2023.
Khaki AR, Lythgoe MP, Prasad V.
Adjuvant checkpoint inhibitor trials: Is disease-free survival an appropriate endpoint? J Cancer Policy. 2023;35:100402.
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If your publication has been omitted from the list, please contact Cameron Scott so he can address the issue.
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