Dan Ly
Dan P. Ly, MD, PhD, MPP, is a physician and an assistant professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. His research focuses on physician behavior, health care disparities, and physician work-life balance. His research has been published in several journals, including JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA Internal Medicine, the BMJ, and Journal of Economic Perspectives. He received a PhD in health policy (economics concentration) from Harvard University, an MD from Weill Cornell Medical College, an MPP from Harvard Kennedy School, and a degree in history from Yale College. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. His work is supported by the National Institute on Minority Health Disparities’ Loan Repayment Program Award.
Benjamin Meza
Dr. Benjamin Paolo Meza completed his research postdoc fellowship at Johns Hopkins and an MHS in Epidemiology. He received his undergraduate from Davidson College and MS from Virginia Commonwealth University, MD from Pitt, followed by residency at University of Miami with a chief's year in Med-Peds. Dr. Meza studies how social networks can be leveraged to improve care for patients from disenfranchised communities. At Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, he served the local low-income Latinx community as a primary care physician in internal medicine. He is an internal medicine and pediatrics trained clinician-investigator whose research interests include the role of social networks in health equity and development throughout the life course. He is currently studying the effect of cooperative group goals on the formation of social networks and prevention of adolescent substance use. The mission of the safety net resonates with his work and he provides clinical care primarily at Olive View Medical Center.
Chelsea Shover
Dr. Chelsea Shover is an Assistant Professor in Residence in GIMHSR. Dr. Shover completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at Stanford. She completed her undergraduate degree at Harvard University and PhD at the UCLA SPH in the Department of Epidemiology. Her research focuses on the intersection of policy, personal characteristics, health behaviors, and substance use. She was awarded an NIH K01 to support a project entitled "Adoption and scale up of long-acting medications for opioid use disorder by U.S. clinicians."
Evan Shannon
Dr. Evan Michael Shannon is a clinician-investigator, Assistant Professor-in-Residence in the UCLA Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research, and hospitalist at the West Los Angeles VA. He completed his undergraduate at Stanford University and masters in public health at UCLA. He then completed his medical degree at UCSF and residency and fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is interested in studying racial and ethnic disparities in specialty care access and the impact of social determinants of health on healthcare delivery to vulnerable populations. He also has experience developing post-graduate anti-racism curricula and enhancing equity, diversity and inclusion initiatives at academic medical centers.
Utpal Sandesara
Dr. Utpal Sandesara obtained his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and his MD and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. He recently completed his residency from the Olive View/Santa Clarita Primary Care track pathway. He is a sociocultural anthropologist with interests in medical inequality and health professions education. His past research projects have examined the social histories of environmental disaster, the challenges of public health system integration, and the ethical dimensions of sex-selective abortion in India. In addition to several academic publications, Dr. Sandesara has also co-authored the narrative nonfiction book No One Had a Tongue to Speak. He aspires to have a future career that combines primary care for the underserved with writing and teaching about social issues in medicine.
Rich Leuchter
Dr. Leuchter grew up in Los Angeles, completed his undergrad in economics and molecular biology at Wesleyan University, and then came to UCLA for medical school and residency. He completed the NIH R38 Resident Scientist Training Program, and is now joining the GIM-HSR faculty as a 45% hospitalist and 55% health services researcher. His research focuses on using predictive modeling and applied mathematics to identify unnecessary testing and procedures at-scale with a focus on health equity. For his most recent hobby, Rich reports that he is currently about 4 weeks into the process of becoming a professional pizza chef with his new Ooni pizza oven (he admits there is ample room for improvement). He also reports that unfortunately, his last two attempts at developing new professional skills (pickle ball and fermenting hot sauce) have yet to pan out…stay tuned.”
Katherine Chen
Katherine Chen completed her undergraduate degree at Yale University and her M.D., residency, and chief residency in internal medicine at UCLA before joining the UCLA National Clinician Scholars Program as a postdoctoral fellow in 2019. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Health Policy & Management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health with support from the Specialty Training and Advanced Research (STAR) program and NRSA Primary Care Research Fellowship. Her research explores the intersection of housing policy, neighborhood context, and population health equity. She received the UCLA Chancellor’s Award for Postdoctoral Research in 2021 and the SGIM Mack Lipkin Sr. Associate Member Scientific Presentation Award in 2022. She will also practice primary care and supervise residents at Simms/Mann Health and Wellness Center.
Carlos Oronce
Carlos Irwin A. Oronce completed his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and his masters in physiology at Georgetown University. He completed his medical degree and masters in public health at Tulane University before joining the UCLA National Clinician Scholars Program as a postdoctoral fellow in 2019. He is a fellow in the VA Advanced Fellowship in Health Services Research and a primary care physician at the Greater Los Angeles VA Healthcare System. He is also a fellow in the Specialty Training and Advanced Research (STAR) Program in the Department of Medicine. His work focuses on the role of the health system in improving population health, advancing health equity, and delivering better value in care. His research interests include: (1) examining health system and policy interventions to address the social determinants of health, (2) understanding the impact of value-based care and payment policy on quality and outcomes with a focus on vulnerable patients, and (3) evaluating interventions that improve quality and value while reducing disparities for racial/ethnic minorities and low-income populations.
Maria Jimenez – Hem-Onc – HSR
Dr. Maria Garcia-Jimenez, MD/MHS, graduated from the UCLA Hematology/Oncology Fellowship program in June 2022. She attended the UC Berkeley/UC San Francisco Joint Medical Program for her medical education and obtained a Master of Health Science along with her Medical Degree. As a Mexican immigrant, her career in medicine has always been guided by seeking opportunities to contribute to eliminating health disparities, especially for racial/ethnic minority and limited English proficiency patients. Through her master’s thesis work she became particularly interested in cancer health disparities and medical oncology. After completing her internal medicine residency at New York University, where she conducted research with the support of the Rudin Medical Ethics and Humanities Fellowship, she returned to California for her fellowship in hematology/oncology. She served as the Chief Fellow during her last year in the UCLA Hematology/Oncology fellowship program, and throughout her fellowship conducted research on improving participation by racial/ethnic minorities in therapeutic cancer clinical trials with the support of the Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials Career Development award. In the fall of 2022 she will begin her appointment as a Clinical Instructor in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at UCLA and as the Director of Oncology Research at UCLA-Olive View Division of Hematology/Oncology. In addition to seeing patients in clinic, she will continue her research in clinical trial participation disparities and end-of-life care disparities for racial/ethnic minority patients with cancer.
Lawrence Benjamin – 3rd Year STAR Fellow – HSR
Dr. Benjamin completed his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis and his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital. He recently completed a fellowship in Pulmonary & Critical Care and is pursuing a PhD in Health Policy & Management at the Fielding School of Public Health. His research focuses on improving access to Lung Cancer Screening. He plans to use larger, nationally representative datasets to describe the impact of healthcare access and social determinants of health on Lung Cancer screening rates through metrics like the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI). Turning to the state of LCS locally, he hopes to compile a database of the current lung cancer screening scans performed at the WLA VA to identify potential care gaps for improvement. Finally, he hopes to employ more qualitative methods to conduct structured interviews of key stakeholders from both providers and patients to identify what providers and patients alike might be most receptive to when implementing improvement programs.
Adys Mendizabal – Neurology and Molecular, Cell and Development Biology – HSR
Adys Mendizabal is an assistant professor, ladder series in the Institute of Society and Genetics and Department of Neurology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychobiology from the University of Miami and completed medical school at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University. While in medical school, she also earned a Master of Arts in Urban Bioethics, focusing on social determinants of health in urban communities. She completed her neurology residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. As a neurology resident, she developed a health equities curriculum for neurology residents in addition to research and community engagement efforts. She recently completed a movement disorders fellowship at UCLA and a Master of Science in Health Policy and Management from the Fielding School of Public Health.
Her health services research and equity diversity and inclusion efforts have been recognized through nationally recognized awards, including the Gold Humanism Award and Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA). She is currently a recipient of the Huntington Disease Society of America (HDSA) Berman Topper Career Development Award. Her research focuses on racial and ethnic disparities in Huntington's Disease (HD) care. She's also developing projects improving sociodemographic data collection in HD while also drafting HD-specific quality metrics. In addition to health services research in HD, her work looks at the relationship between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and healthcare outcomes in adults with neurological diseases.
Jennifer Adrissi – Neurology - HSR
Jennifer Adrissi graduated from the University of Maryland College Park in 2012 where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Physiology and Neurobiology followed by a MD from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. After graduating in 2016, Jennifer continued at Northwestern as part of the adult neurology residency program. In addition to her clinical work and research in neurology, she also contributes to research in public health, medical education, and global health including work in Uganda, South Africa, and Zambia. Her research is primarily in Parkinson’s disease (PD), specifically using community-based participatory research (CBPR) and mixed methods to better understand the “why” and “what now” questions of health disparities in the field as they relate to underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities.
Kacie Detters – Physiology - HSR
Dr. Kacie Deters earned her B.S. in Biology from the University of Alabama, Birmingham. She had little research experience and was curious if this was the path she wanted to pursue. After a year of figuring out what would make her happy, she ultimately completed her M.S. in Biology from CSU Dominguez Hills in 2012. Science turned into a passion Kacie wanted to explore more. In 2017, she earned her Ph.D. in Medical Neuroscience at the Indiana University School of Medicine focusing on genetic and imaging characteristics of tauopathies, including Alzheimer’s disease. Kacie then completed her first postdoc in 2021 at Stanford University with Dr. Elizabeth Mormino where she first began to explore ethnic and racial disparities existed in AD biomarkers. COVID hit, and Kacie decided to take a second postdoc, which she completed in 2022 at the University of California, San Diego in the Department of Neurosciences with Dr. Sarah Banks. While at UCSD, Kacie expanded her training to understand racial bias that exists in neuropsychological assessments. While at UCLA, Kacie’s lab will focus is on ethnic and racial disparities in predictors (genetic; neuroimaging; neuropsychological assessments; social/environmental factors) for cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease and related dementias in older adults, primarily from the Black community.