Training Sites

Center on Social Disparities in Health
University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)/Berkeley

Contact Information
Director
Training Site Overview
Training Site Expectations

Contact Information

Center on Social Disparities in Health
Department of Family and Community Medicine
University of California, San Francisco
3333 California Street, Suite 365
San Francisco, CA 94118

Ph: 415 476-6839
Fax: 415 476-5219
E-mail: braveman@fcm.ucsf.edu
Director: Dr. Paula Braveman


Director: Paula Braveman, M.D., M.P.H.

Paula Braveman, M.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Family and Community Medicine and Director of the Center on Social Disparities in Health. She received her degrees in medicine from UCSF and in epidemiology from UC Berkeley, and practiced medicine in a range of settings serving diverse disadvantaged populations. For more than two decades, Dr. Braveman has studied and published extensively on social disparities in health and health care and actively engaged in bringing attention to this field in the U.S. and internationally. Her research has focused on measuring, documenting, and understanding socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities, particularly in maternal and infant health and health care. During the 1990s she worked with World Health Organization staff in Geneva to develop and implement a global initiative on equity in health and health care. Throughout her career, she has collaborated with local, state, federal, and international health agencies to see research translated into practice with the goal of achieving greater equity in health. She has been a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences since her election in 2002.

Co-Director: S. Leonard Syme, Ph.D.

S. Leonard Syme, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus in Epidemiology and Community Health/Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Syme is nationally and internationally recognized as one of the originators of the field of social epidemiology, and as a mentor for many prominent social epidemiologists. His major research interests have been social determinants of disease; psychosocial risk factors such as job stress, social support and poverty; and community interventions. In doing this research, he has studied San Francisco bus drivers; Japanese living in Japan, Hawaii and California; British civil servants; and people living in Alameda County, California. Dr. Syme has written two books and over 130 published papers, and has been a visiting professor at universities in England and Japan. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and has received several honors related to his teaching and research, among them the Lilienfeld Award for Excellence in Teaching, the J.D. Bruce Award for Distinguished Contributions in Preventative Medicine, and the University of California Distinguished Emeritus Professor Award.


Training Site Overview

The Center on Social Disparities in Health provides a nexus for collaborations among distinguished researchers with expertise in multiple disciplines relevant to social disparities in health. Center faculty — including those based at UCSF as well as collaborating investigators at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), Stanford University, the University of Texas at Austin, and other institutions — have demonstrated a long-standing commitment to studying and addressing social disparities in health.

Major themes of research at the Center on Social Disparities in Health include:
  • documenting, measuring and understanding socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities in health and health care, and applying that knowledge to contribute to policy change;
  • understanding the social and social policy determinants of health disparities, including factors operating at the neighborhood or community level, in a life-course perspective;
  • understanding the interplay of socioeconomic factors and racism and how these may influence health, particularly maternal and infant health;
  • developing and applying rigorous methods not only for time-limited research but also for ongoing policy-oriented monitoring of social disparities; and
  • conceptual and methodologic research related to the above, e.g., clarifying the concept of health disparities/inequalities and implications for measurement, measurement of socioeconomic status/position, and measurement of experiences of racism.
MENTORS
In addition to the Site Directors and Core Faculty of the Center on Social Disparities in Health, mentors at the UCSF-UC Berkeley training site also include other UCSF, UC Berkeley, and Stanford faculty representing diverse disciplines. The Program Directors help scholars both to develop individualized career development and research plans and to find the best mentoring matches within the program's wide networks. The process of matching each scholar with a mentor takes place during his or her first 4-6 weeks at the UCSF/UCB training site, when scholars are encouraged to meet with several potential mentors before making their final selections in consultation with the Site Director. Scholars typically are each matched with one primary mentor (often from the scholar's discipline) as well as one or two additional secondary mentors (often from different disciplines). The primary mentor is responsible for supervising the scholar's research and for providing career advice, while secondary mentors provide additional mentoring in specific areas such as methodological advice. The Site Director is responsible for monitoring the overall academic progress of each scholar, and may or may not be the primary or secondary mentor for a scholar, depending on the fit.

Fellows are encouraged to identify mentors from among faculty of any schools and departments at UCSF, UCB, and Stanford with whom there is a good match for their interests. A few examples of potential mentors from UCSF, UCB and Stanford who have led seminars and/or mentored scholars are listed below; all of them share a strong interest in population health and health disparities.
  • Barbara Abrams, PhD, Professor of Epidemiology, Maternal and Child Health, and Public Health Nutrition, UCB (nutritional epidemiology, maternal and infant health).
  • Nancy Adler, Professor, Health Psychology; Director, Center for Health and Community, UCSF (subjective social status, social determinants of health).
  • Andrew Bindman, Professor, Division of General Internal Medicine, UCSF (disparities in access to and quality of medical care).
  • Paula Braveman, Professor of Family and Community Medicine and Director, Center on Social Disparities in Health (see Site Director profile above).
  • Claire Brindis, Professor and Director, Institute for Health Policy Studies, UCSF (reproductive health; immigration, acculturation and health, particularly for Latinos; translation of research into policy).
  • Catherine Cubbin, Associate Professor, School of Social Work, University of Texas at Austin (neighborhoods and health, multilevel modeling) (Note: Dr. Cubbin was at the Center in Social Disparities in Health at UCSF for several years before moving to Texas; she has continued to be an active collaborator in our Center's work, and has provided extensive mentoring to some scholars by phone and e-mail).
  • Susan Egerter, Associate Research Scientist, Family and Community Medicine, and Co-Director, Center on Social Disparities in Health, UCSF (maternal and infant epidemiology, social determinants of health, documenting and understanding health disparities by race and class).
  • Lia Fernald, Associate Professor, UCSF and UCB (poverty and stress, biomarkers of stress).
  • Larry Fisher, Professor of Family and Community Medicine, UCSF (psychosocial factors in diabetes/chronic disease in different racial/ethnic groups).
  • Kevin Grumbach, Professor and Chair, Family & Community Medicine, UCSF (strategies for healthcare workforce diversity, health care organization).
  • Sylvia Guendelman, Professor and Chair, Maternal and Child Health, UCB (immigration, acculturation and health, especially for Latinos and in maternal and child health).
  • Robert Hiatt, Professor and Co-Chair, Epidemiology and Biostatistics (cancer disparities).
  • Margaret Kemeny, Professor of Health Psychology, UCSF (stress and health, including stress physiology).
  • Kristen Marchi, Senior Analyst, Center on Social Disparities in Health and Department of Family and Community Medicine (maternal and child epidemiology, survey research, quantitative methods).
  • Meredith Minkler, Professor, Community Health Education and Health & Social Behavior, UCB (community-based participatory research).
  • Dorothy Porter, Professor and Chair, Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine, UCSF.
  • Arthur Reingold, Professor and Head of Epidemiology, UCB (infectious disease prevention and treatment strategies in the US and internationally).
  • Anita Stewart, Professor Emeritus, MERC, Institute for Health and Aging, UCSF (measurement, social factors in aging).
  • Marilyn Winkleby, Professor of Medicine, Stanford (community-based prevention strategies, role of ethnicity and other social factors in chronic disease, particularly cardiovascular disease).
  • Multiple faculty of the nationally-renowned Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF.
  • Multiple faculty of the world-renowned UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, which has pioneered community-based interventions internationally and in disadvantaged communities in the U.S.
Kellogg Health Scholars
2006-2008: Angela Thrasher
2008-2010: Lisa Goldman Rosas, Ph.D., and Emma Sanchez, Sc.D.
2009-2011: Darrell Hudson, Ph.D.

Other Resources
Each scholar at UCSF/UCB is provided space with access to internet, telephone, photocopier/scanner, fax, and IT support. In most cases, scholars need to provide their own computers; most scholars purchase a laptop using their research funds from this program. Each scholar is issued a UCSF ID that provides access to all University facilities such as libraries, free shuttles between campuses, and access to purchasing membership in fitness facilities and to free/discounted cultural events.

Opportunities for Interactions with peers
Becoming a Kellogg Scholar at UCSF/UCB means becoming a member of a broader community of other talented postdoctoral research fellows, including the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars; postdoctoral fellows at MERC, a center devoted to research on racial/ethnic disparities in health care; and fellows in Health Policy, Health Psychology, Medical Sociology, Medical Anthropology, and Primary (Health) Care. The Center on Social Disparities in Health hosts a regular seminar series focusing on issues relevant to health disparities research and policy. There is a new joint program with the Hastings Law School. UCSF/UCB are characterized by a strong culture of collaboration, which opens up diverse resources to scholars. Scholars have access to the faculty, seminars and lectures at these other programs, at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health, and other schools of UCB, with permission. Several training and social events are shared across programs. UCSF gives all postdoctoral scholars access to a rich array of resources through its Clinical and Translational Science Institute, including mentoring on applying for K-awards and other NIH grants, biostatistical consultation, and general professional development.


Training Site Expectations

How many projects are recommended?
Our aim is to maximize the training experience and productivity of scholars during their two years at UCSF/UCB. Our expectation is that scholars will publish papers based on their Ph.D. dissertation work, and also explore some new areas and perspectives. Our scholars generally work on two or more projects simultaneously during a typical year — for example, a scholar might work with his or her primary mentor on an analysis of a large data-set and with a secondary mentor on a smaller project such as a review paper.

Policy on teaching and employment
We expect this to be a full-time experience. To maximize the postdoctoral learning experience, we discourage teaching of courses or outside employment by our scholars. Contributing the occasional lecture to someone else's course may be a valuable learning experience, but we neither expect nor encourage scholars to offer courses during their training.

Expectations of publications/grant proposals
We expect scholars to publish a minimum of 3-4 peer-reviewed articles during the fellowship. Faculty of the Center on Social Disparities in Health and other mentors provide scholars with hands-on help in getting their articles submitted and published, and in writing grant proposals. Scholars at UCSF/UCB are not necessarily expected to submit grant proposals during their training, although we encourage some scholars to do so when the timing in their careers seems appropriate.

For more information please contact Paula Braveman (braveman@fcm.ucsf.edu).