CHIME - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Scientist
- MSHS / Scientist
Job Titles:
- Scientist
- MSHS / Scientist
Anna Choi, MPP, Ph.D is an Assistant Professor, Dept of Public Administration, Sejong University. Her training is in health economics, with the focus on risky health behaviors. Her RCMAR CHIME pilot study aims to analyze the relationship between neighborhood characteristics as well as perceptions of neighborhoods on obesity-related health behaviors (i.e. walking for leisure, fast food and soda consumption) among minority elderly in California, focusing on Asian Americans and comparing them to Hispanic and African American elderly adults. The project will use California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) data from 2011 to 2017, with geographic identifiers matched to American Community Survey data.
Annie L. Nguyen, PhD, MPH, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine, University of Southern California, received a Doctorate in Philosophy in Public and Community Health from the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, and a Master of Public Health in Evaluative Clinical Sciences from Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH. Dr. Nguyen was the recipient of an NIH-funded Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) while a doctoral student that supported her research on successful aging among Chinese and Hmong elders living in the Milwaukee area. Dr. Nguyen is interested in social determinants of health and health disparities with a focus on the aging population.
Job Titles:
- Scientist
- Associate Professor of Psychology
- Principal Investigator of Several National Institute of Health
April D. Thames, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology, USC
Dr. Thames is the Principal Investigator of several National Institute of Health (NIH) grant-supported projects, which has allowed her to develop an interdisciplinary research program focused on the role of social adversity in cognitive and mental health outcomes that drive major health disparities. Her lab uses state-of-the-art tools of cognitive and psychiatric assessment, neuroimaging, and biomarkers to answer questions about the sequelae of health and mental health disparities. Her recent work has also examined psychosocial factors that obscure the validity of cognitive test performance among underrepresented ethnic/racial minority and under-resourced groups.
She is actively involved in national professional organizations in various leadership roles including her role as Member-at-Large for the American Psychological Association's Society for Clinical Neuropsychology, and former role as past Chair of SCN's Ethnic Minority Affairs Committee (EMA).
She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Alliant International University/CSPP and completed a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship in clinical neuropsychology at UCLA. She is also the recipient of an NIH/NIMH career development award (K23).
Bita Amani is a social epidemiologist whose teaching and research focus on the synergies and tensions between community health, structural racism, politics, and power. With over fifteen years of experience in both local and global settings, her work investigates how social disinvestment and state-sanctioned violence result in disease and public health crisis. She prioritizes solutions that strengthen our existing community health infrastructure, and she examines global models of community health, such as the Cuban Health System. She is an Associate Professor at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science (CDU), and lead co-chair of the UCLA/CDU COVID-19 Racism and Equity Task Force housed in the UCLA Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice, and Health. She is also Co-Director of CDU's Black Maternal Health Center of Excellence. Bita is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, and she was a National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) HIV/AIDS Postdoctoral Scholar.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Co - Director, Community Liaison and Recruitment Core
Brandon Brown, PhD, Assistant Professor, Center for Healthy Communities, Division of Clinical Sciences, University of California, Riverside (UCR) School of Medicine, is a bilingual (English/Spanish) health services researcher with over 10 years of research experience on sexually transmitted infections with a focus on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention. His research focus includes the global impact, stigma, and ethics of human papillomavirus virus (HPV) and HIV and his research activities include work on HIV and HPV-related disease, and cancer prevention among underserved populations in the United States, Peru, Mexico and Nigeria.
Dr. Brown is the Research Director at Peruvian non-governmental organization (NGO), Epicentro Salud, and collaborates on HIV -related research projects with other organizations including the Coachella Valley Community Research Initiative in Riverside County, California. He is helping create new programs within the newly formed UCR Center for Healthy Communities, partnering with local community centers and public health practitioners in building a robust research portfolio in the growing field of HIV and aging. He is a member of the Infectious Disease Society of America, the International Society of Vaccines, the Global Health Council, APHA, and the UC Global Health Institute. He has authored over 70 publications and is a regular reviewer for high impact journals.
Dr. Brown received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Applied Mathematics from UC Irvine, a Master of Public Health degree from UCLA, and a Doctorate of Philosophy in International Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is a recipient of a 2015 HIV Prevention Trials Network Scholarship sponsored by the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID): https://www.hptn.org/research/scholars/scholars/dr-brandon-brown
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Scientist
- Professor
Bruce Ovbiagele, MD, Professor of Neurology and Associate Dean at the University of San Francisco as well as Chief of Staff at the San Francisco VA Health Care System, received a Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, West Africa, and is particularly interested in the field of secondary stroke prevention in minority elders.
Carol M. Mangione, MD, MSPH, FACP, is the Barbara A. Levey, MD, and Gerald S. Levey, MD, endowed chair in medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and professor of public health at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. In addition, she serves as director of the UCLA/Drew Resource Center for Minority Aging Research/Center for Health Improvement of Minority Elderly, co-director of the UCLA Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program, associate director of the UCLA Clinical and Translational Sciences (CTSI) and director of the UCLA CTSI Workforce Development Program. Dr. Mangione is also a practicing primary care physician in the UCLA Faculty Practice Group and a professor of medicine and public health at UCLA. She also serves as the national study co-chair for the multicenter program Natural Experiments in Translation for Diabetes, which is sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease (NIDDK) and Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).
Dr. Mangione's areas of expertise include diabetes, diabetes prevention, health disparities, aging, public health, health insurance benefit design, and public health policy. She is a member of numerous professional societies and organizations, including the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Society for General Internal Medicine, the American Geriatrics Society, AcademyHealth, the American Diabetes Association, American College of Physicians and recently appointed to the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force. She was also a member of the Board of Governors for the Pardee RAND Graduate School.
Dr. Mangione was the principal investigator for "The Diabetes Health Plan: A System Level Intervention to Prevent and Treat Diabetes," funded by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) to evaluate the effectiveness of the first disease specific health plan in the United States. This work focused on studying the influence of benefit design on prevention of diabetes, adherence to medications, and control of cardiovascular risk factors among persons with diabetes. Dr. Mangione is the Principal Investigator of the "Managing Your Medication for Education and Daily Support," (MYMEDS) program which embeds clinical pharmacists in primary care practices to enhance communication, educate, and improve medication adherence for patients with poor control of cardiovascular risk factors and in older adults who have polypharmacy and are struggling with adherence to their medications. She is co-principal investigator of a grant from NIDDK, "A Cluster-Randomized Trial of Pharmacist-Coordinated Implementation of the Diabetes Prevention Program," which evaluates a primary care based program that uses a shared decision making tool to help patients with pre-diabetes learn about the condition and make treatment choices that will reduce their chance of developing diabetes. Finally, she has recently received an award from CDC and NIDDK entitled "A Partnered Evaluation of United Health Care's (UHC) Medicaid Plan Innovations for Diabetes Patients" that will evaluate health plan level innovations designed to improve the care of patients with chronic conditions in the Medicaid expansion population.
Dr. Mangione was recognized in 2013 with the UCLA Exceptional Physician Award and in 2005 with the Society of General Internal Medicine Mid-Career Mentorship Award. She serves as a reviewer for the Journal of General Internal Medicine, New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. Mangione has authored more than 230 peer-reviewed articles and seven book chapters.
Dr. Mangione received her B.S. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She earned her M.D. at the University of California, San Francisco and completed her residency at University of California Affiliated Hospitals. Dr. Mangione earned her M.S.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health and has completed fellowships at Harvard Medical School.
Carolyn Mendez-Luck, PhD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor in the Center for Health Aging Research School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, College of Public Health Human Sciences, Oregon State University, and an Assistant Adjunct Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Dr. Mendez-Luck received a Doctorate of Philosophy and a Master of Public Health from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and her research interests include community-based participatory research methods, care giving of older Latinos and aging-related health disparities in this population.
Job Titles:
- Co - Director, Community Liaison and Recruitment Core
- Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine
- Staff Physician at the Greater Los Angeles VA Healthcare System
Dr. Sarkisian, Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine and Staff Physician at the Greater Los Angeles VA Healthcare System, attended Princeton University ('89 Philosophy), subsequently graduated from the UCSF School of Medicine in 1993, and completed her internship and residency in Primary Care Internal Medicine at The New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center. After spending 1 year on the faculty at Jacobi Hospital/Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, she became a UCLA Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar, and completed a masters degree in Health Services at the UCLA School of Public Health. She completed a 1-year clinical geriatrics fellowship at the UCLA Multicampus Program in Geriatrics and Gerontology, and joined the faculty in the UCLA Division of Geriatrics as a Clinician Scientist in 2000. In July, 2008, she received tenure and joined the Greater Los Angeles VA Healthcare System, where she maintains a joint appointment with UCLA.
Claude M. Setodji, PhD, MSc, Senior statistician at the RAND Corporation, codirector of the RAND Center for Causal Inference, and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, received a Doctorate of Philosophy in Statistics and a Master of Science in Statistics from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Dr. Setodji, who has expertise in psychometric evaluation methodologies including exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, item response theory and statistical data reduction, is interested in researching areas of bio-terrorism preparedness and quality of care including quality of care in nursing homes and quality of care for patients facing language barriers.
Job Titles:
- Scientist
- Assistant Professor of Gerontology and of Psychology
Cleopatra M. Abdou-Kamperveen, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Gerontology and of Psychology in The Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California. She received a Master of Arts degree and a Doctorate of Philosophy from the UCLA Department of Psychology, and was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at the University of Michigan (UM), Ann Arbor, MI.
Dr. Abdou-Kamperveen's interdisciplinary program integrates psychology, human development and aging, public health, and medicine to better understand lifespan and intergenerational health disparities, with special emphasis on women's health. Dr. Abdou developed the Culture and Social Identity Health Theory and the related conceptual framework, Aging Before Birth and Beyond. She was the first to empirically demonstrate the phenomenon of healthcare stereotype threat, spawning a new area of research. Dr. Abdou's nearly two-dozen articles have been published in psychology, public health, medicine, sociology, and gerontology journals. Her research has been funded by several arms of the National Institutes of Health, including the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities, and the National Institute of Mental Health, as well as by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Michigan Center for Integrative Approaches to Health Disparities. She is also a selected member of the Fulbright Specialists Roster.
Job Titles:
- Scientist
- Assistant Professor of Community Health Sciences
Courtney S. Thomas, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Community Health Sciences in the Fielding School of Public Health and Faculty Associate of the Bunche Center for African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Thomas earned a PhD in Sociology from Vanderbilt University in 2015 and was a University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA prior to joining the faculty in 2016.
Her primary areas of interest include the psychobiology of stress and coping, racial health disparities, aging and the life course, and social stratification. Drawing on her training in medical sociology, Thomas uses mixed-method, transdisciplinary approaches to identify sources of psychosocial risk and resilience that contribute to gender and socioeconomic health disparities among African Americans.
In recent research, she applies a new framework, "The Racial Self-Awareness (RSA) Framework of Race-Based Stress, Coping, and Health" to conceptualize and evaluate the ways racial minority status transforms stress and coping processes to produce distinct patterns of psychological and physiological health for African Americans.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Co - Director, Research Education Core
Cynthia Gonzalez is an assistant professor in the Department of Urban Public Health at Charles R. Drew University (CDU) and Director of the Pardee RAND Graduate School's PhD Program in Policy Analysis focused on the Community-Partnered Policy and Action. As a first-generation Mexican-American lifetime resident of Watts (a neighborhood in South Los Angeles), she brings a strong background in community based participatory research, cultural anthropology, and social ethnography to the understanding of community health with a pedagogy rooted in equity, social justice, critical engagement, and multidisciplinary scholarship. Dr. Gonzalez has developed place-based initiatives through community engagement and neighborhood assessments to improve the quality of life for racial/ethnic minoritized residents living in under-resourced neighborhoods. She has developed partnerships between community, government, and academia through efforts such as the Watts Community Studio and Los Angeles Promise Zone Young Ethnographers Program that led to the development of a neighborhood collaborative of over 50 cross-sectoral members receiving over $120M in community infrastructure for wellbeing, known as the Watts Rising Collaborative. She is a proud mentee of Dr. Keith Norris from the NIH-NIDDK High School Student Summer Research Program.
David Richard Lee, MD, MBA is a fellow in the NRSA T32 Primary Care
Research Fellowship and the Specialty Training and Advanced Research (STAR) program in the Department of Medicine. He is also a practicing geriatrician in the Division of Geriatrics at UCLA. He received his MD and MBA from the University of California, Irvine in 2016, completed internal medicine residency at Kaiser Permanente Oakland medical center, and completed geriatrics fellowship at UCLA. His work focuses on the role of health systems in improving care for older adults, particularly for persons living with dementia and their caregivers. His research interests include: (1) understanding policy and health system interventions on outcomes for vulnerable older adults, (2) applying organizational behavior theory to understand implementation of comprehensive dementia care programs, and (3) evaluating interventions for improving the quality and value of care for persons living with dementia and their caregivers.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California
Dr. Chioun Lee is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside. Her expertise as a quantitative life-course sociologist focuses on the intricate interplay between gender/sex, race/ethnicity, family dynamics, aging, health, and overall well-being. In her ongoing research, she builds upon her established body of work, with a specific focus on investigating disparities in multimorbidity and later-life health through an intersectional perspective. She is dedicated to exploring modifiable life-course factors that have the potential to mitigate disparities among marginalized and privileged older adults.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- MSHS / Senior Advisor, Community Liaison and Recruitment Core
- Senior Advisor, Community Liaison and Recruitment Core
Dr. Gerardo Moreno is an Associate Professor In-Residence in the Department of Family Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is a bi-lingual researcher (Spanish-English) conducting research on vulnerable populations, particularly aging-related issues for Latinos with chronic conditions. Dr. Moreno is a recipient of a Paul Beeson Paul Beeson Career Development Award, is a former Fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program at UCLA. He received his medical degree from UCLA, completed a residency at the University of California, San Francisco, and received a Master of Science in Health Services in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
Job Titles:
- Senior Advisor, Analysis Core
Dr. Gery Ryan comes to the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine from the RAND Corporation, where he was a Senior Behavioral Scientist and served as Assistant Dean of Academics at the Pardee RAND Graduate School in Policy Analysis. Trained as a medical anthropologist and methodologist, his research spans mental and physical health and includes work on HIV/AIDS, homelessness, depression, serious mental illness, childhood illnesses, obesity, social networks, human trafficking and complementary and alternative medicine. He also has spent extensive time in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East addressing health and education-related problems. As a methodologist and evaluator, he specializes in the integration of qualitative and quantitative methodologies; designing, implementing and assessing complex system interventions; and quality-improvement projects. Dr. Ryan has taught graduate courses and mentored clinical researchers in advanced ethnographic methods; run qualitative workshops sponsored by NSF, NIH, CDC and WHO; and co-authored a comprehensive textbook on text analysis.
Job Titles:
- Primary Care Physician
- Near Peer, Analysis Core
Dr. Kimberly Narain is a primary care physician and health services researcher in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research at UCLA. She completed her internal medicine residency at the University of California, San Francisco. Following residency, she completed a California Endowment Minority Health Policy Fellowship at Harvard Medical School and a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar Fellowship at UCLA. Upon completion of these fellowships, Dr. Narain earned a PhD in Health Services Research from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Her current research seeks to illuminate structural drivers of racial, ethnic and income-based disparities in obesity and obesity-related diseases, with a particular focus on health policy, healthcare delivery system design and work structure.
Job Titles:
- Scientist
- MSHPM / Scientist
Emma Aguila, PhD, MSc, an Assistant Professor in the Sol Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California, received a Doctorate of Philosophy in Economics from the University College, London, England, where her dissertation was on the economics of aging. Dr. Aguila, a bilingual (Spanish-English) researcher, is interested in research on health system reform in Mexico, where she is from, for the Mexican Ministry of Health, and her areas of research include the economics of aging, health economics and development economics.
Helen Ovsepyan, PhD, JD, MPH, is a qualitative and mixed methods health services researcher. Dr. Ovsepyan has an appointment as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine at Charles R. Drew University (CDU). She serves as the director for Research Education and the course director for the Foundation of Research longitudinal track in the College of Medicine at CDU, where she also teaches qualitative and mixed methods research as part of the medical school curriculum.
Her research experience includes preparing question guides and conducting interviews and focus groups, developing and administering surveys, analyzing both qualitative and quantitative data, and drafting grants and manuscripts for qualitative and mixed methods research. Her research interests include community-based participatory research and examining policies and interventions for addressing the social determinants of health and reducing health disparities among minority and underserved populations. Dr. Ovsepyan's background as a practicing healthcare attorney also makes her well-versed in the legal landscape of healthcare, having published numerous practice-based articles and white papers and presented at several continuing education seminars for legal and healthcare professionals.
Dr. Ovsepyan earned her Master of Public Health and Doctor of Philosophy in Health Policy and Management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
Job Titles:
- Co - Director, Research Education Core
Homero E. del Pino has a BA in philosophy from Cornell University and holds a doctorate in philosophy and a master of science in clinical research from UCLA. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. As a philosopher, Dr. del Pino focused on ethics and wrote his dissertation on the topic of weakness of the will. He then worked with health departments and community-based organizations at the national level and with the CDC before starting his research career in public health. His primary research interests include the impact of family relationships on the health outcomes of sexual minority men of color across the life span, substance use, and HIV risk. He is currently the principal investigator of "Entre Herman@s," an NIH-funded, randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of engaging the siblings of Latino men who have sex with men in the development and dissemination of HIV PrEP-promotion messages. He is also the recipient of a K01 career development award to explore strategies for engaging the families of Latino MSM in HIV prevention efforts.
Job Titles:
- Scientist
- MSHS / Scientist
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Neurology
- MSCR / Scientist
Dr. Adrissi is an Assistant Professor of Neurology and co-located faculty member in the Internal Medicine, General Internal Medicine, and Health Services Research Division at UCLA. Her clinical expertise focuses on movement disorders, particularly Parkinson's disease and atypical parkinsonism syndromes such as multiple system atrophy, progressive supranuclear palsy, corticobasal syndrome, and Lewy body dementia. Her research interests include the use of community-based participatory research methods to develop community-partnered interventions to improve access to specialized care, support resources, and clinical trials in PD and other neurodegenerative disorders within communities with excess disease burden and reduced access to care. She is the founder and program director of the Parkinson's C.O.R.E. Collaborative, an academic-community alliance that uses the pillars of Community-building, Outreach, Research, and Education to improve outcomes and access to PD resources within communities with excess disease burden and reduced access to care.
Job Titles:
- Scientist
- Professor in the Department of Medicine, David
Jose J. Escarce, MD, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, a Professor of Health Policy and Management in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, and a Senior Natural Scientist at RAND Corporation. Dr. Escarce, a bi-lingual (Spanish/English) researcher, received a Doctorate of Medicine and Doctorate of Philosophy in Health Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Master of Science in Physics from Harvard University, Boston, MA. His research interests include provider and patient behavior under economic incentives, access to care, racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care, immigrant health, and the impact of managed care on cost and quality.
Jose Luis Calderon, MD, Adjunct Associate Professor, Division of General Internal Medicine & Health Services Research, Department of Medicine, the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA. He obtained a Doctorate of Medicine from Harvard Medical School and post-graduate training in Family Medicine (SUNY Health Sciences Center) and Neurology (New York University/Bellevue Hospital Center). Dr. Calderon, completed fellowship programs in epidemiology (Johns Hopkins School of Public Health), health literacy (AAMC Health Services Research Institute), and social equity/health disparities (Meharry College of Medicine/Vanderbilt University). His methodological expertise is in using mixed-methods (survey and qualitative) to implement pragmatic comparative effectiveness research that addresses health disparities based on an ethno-medical (cross-cultural) platform. His health disparities research focus is multi-pronged: 1) using animation to improve chronic disease health literacy for vulnerable populations (aging, race/ethnic minorities) by using animation, 2) developing methods to improve health communication by simplifying health-related text, 3) design and development of disease-specific surveys with utility for vulnerable populations with limited literacy skills and 4) assessment and redesign of national surveys based on visual display and cognitive design principles. Dr. Calderon's teaching expertise is in health literacy, health communication, mixed methods research and pharmaco-epidemiology. Dr. Calderon is currently co-Director for the UCLA Center for Maximizing Outcomes and Research on Effectiveness (C-MORE).
Jung-Ah Lee, PhD, RN, an Associate Professor in the Program in Nursing Science, University of California Irvine, received a Doctorate of Philosophy in Nursing from the University of Washington (UW) School of Nursing (SoN), Seattle, WA, and a Master of Nursing from the UW SoN Department of Biobehavioral Nursing and Health Systems. Dr. Lee is interested in healthcare systems and how the structure and processes of a health care system affects patient safety and clinical and organizational outcomes. She has investigated quality improvement techniques, patient safety issues, effective healthcare delivery models and cost-effectiveness of care.
Job Titles:
- Scientist
- Secretary, State of Delaware Department
Kara Odom Walker, MD, MPH, Secretary, State of Delaware Department of Health and Social Services, received a Doctorate of Medicine from Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, PA, and a Master of Public Health in Health-policy Management from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD. Dr. Odom Walker is interested in the impact of access to care over a patient's life course and has a particular interest in the health of vulnerable older adults.
Kathleen Sanchez, PhD, MPH, Research and Evaluation Specialist, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Immunization Program, received a Doctorate of Philosophy in Health Behavior Research from the University of Southern California and a Master in Public Health in Community Health from Yale University, New Haven, CT. Dr. Sanchez' areas of research focus on women's health issues among culturally and linguistically diverse populations, including cancer survivorship and employment, cancer treatment adherence and depression, quality of life and cancer survivorship, and role of social support and compliance with cancer treatment.
Job Titles:
- Senior Advisor, Research Education Core
Lara A. Ray, PhD, MA, a Professor in the Department of Psychology, UCLA, received a Doctorate of Philosophy and a Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology and Behavioral Genetics from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Dr. Ray is interested in researching addictions and her program of research focuses on the integration of clinical psychology, pharmacology, and behavioral genetics to advance treatments for substance use disorders, particularly how they apply to minority elders' alcohol misuse and health promotion.
Lindsey Ross, MD is a Neurosurgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Throughout her career, she has been steadily dedicated to serving disadvantaged populations, mentoring underrepresented minority students, and working towards policy change to address the health needs of the most impoverished and underserved communities. She was tapped to serve as a White House Fellow for the Obama Administration in 2016. In this position she served as a Science and Health Policy Counselor for the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. During medical school, she was selected as a Denzel and Pauletta Washington Gifted Scholar in Neurosciences. Lindsey has enjoyed serving as a clinical leader for the Cedars-Sinai Health Equity Council and chair of the Diversity and Inclusion subcommittee for the Graduate Medical Education committee. Lindsey received a B.S. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University, a M.D. from David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and is currently completing a Master's in health delivery science at Cedars-Sinai. Her RCMAR/CHIME supported research includes a mixed method study design to understand racial and ethnic inequities in Stroke management.
Job Titles:
- Co - Director, Analysis Core
Job Titles:
- Co - Director, Analysis Core