Moving public health forward
PRISE Center
Our Department and the Department of Medicine, with support from the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, launched the PRISE Center – short for Partnerships in Research in Implementation Science for Equity – to help reduce health disparities in San Francisco and beyond. The Center builds collaborations to optimally position implementation science researchers, public health practitioners and healthcare quality improvement teams to develop practice-based evidence that can inform evidence-based practice. The Center is co-led by Margaret Handley, PhD, MPH, and Adithya Cattamanchi, MD, MAS. Maria Garcia, MD, MPH, MAS, and Priya Shete, MD, MPH, have taken over as co-leads of the Implementation Science Training Program that Handley and Cattamanchi had been leading.
Photo credit: Kobby Dagan / Shutterstock.com
All of Us Research Program
Bob Hiatt, MD, PhD, is UCSF’s principal investigator for the NIH research program All of Us, an ambitious long-term program seeking to enroll a million people across the United States to build one of the most diverse health databases in history in order to reduce health disparities and expand the promise of precision medicine. From January-March of 2020, the UCSF team enrolled more than 330 participants, collecting physical measurements, biospecimens, survey responses and access to electronic health records.
After all in-person research was shuttered due to the pandemic, the team conducted online enrollment and retention activities, and UCSF achieved the highest retention rate in California. Research opportunities are now open to all reputable researchers through the All of Us Research Hub, and there are planned study years after the recruitment phase ends in 2023.
Photo credit: National Institutes of Health
Focusing on students’ basic needs in higher education
Suzanna Martinez, PhD, has been leading research, in collaboration with the UC Irvine Center for Educational Partnerships and the Institutional Research and Academic Planning division of the UC Office of the President, to assess the basic food and housing needs of the UC system’s large and diverse student population. In the summer of 2020, the group examined the potential impacts of COVID-19 on UC graduate students experiencing food and/or housing insecurity at seven UC campuses.
They found that the University failed to meet students’ needs as they transitioned to remote learning. About half the students surveyed saw their costs go up, and a third struggled to cover living expenses. Martinez and her colleagues shared their findings with the UC Deans of Graduate Students, UC Graduate Professional Council, UC Student and Equity Affairs and the UC Office of Federal Government Relations. In Fall 2021, the researchers will also present findings to the UC Board of Regents.
Photo credit: Susan Merrell
How does California agriculture affect female farmworkers?
Jacqueline Torres, PhD was awarded NIH funding to investigate the unique and combined impacts of agricultural pesticide exposure and life course social stressors and resilience factors on mid-life cognitive aging among a cohort of women in California’s Salinas Valley. Data collection, delayed due to COVID, will begin in the Fall of 2021. The grant also supports postdoctoral fellow Elizabeth Ambriz, DrPH, who recently joined the project.
Photo credit: Joseph Sorrentino / Shutterstock.com
Un-grouping Asian Americans to better understand cancer risk
Scarlett Gomez, PhD, and Iona Cheng, PhD, received a $3.3-million NIH grant to investigate what accounts for the relatively high rates of lung cancer among non-smoking Asian American women. In collaboration with UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, the researchers hope to unravel the roles played by genetics, cultural factors such as exposure to cooking oil, and environmental exposures women experience in the U.S. and, where applicable, in Asia. The researchers are also analyzing which patients have EFGR-positive lung cancer, which is more common among non-smokers. The study is recruiting Chinese-, Filipina-, Japanese-American women, among others.
Photo credit: Panitanphoto / Shutterstock
