Mark Hawes, MSW, PhD, is a licensed clinical social worker and a postdoctoral fellow at the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (CTCRE) and the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative. His research focuses on tobacco- and substance use-related health disparities among people with behavioral health conditions and those experiencing homelessness or living in permanent supportive housing (PSH).
Deanna M. Halliday, PhD, received her doctorate in Psychological Sciences (Health Psychology) from the University of California, Merced under the mentorship of UCSF alumna Dr. Anna Song. Prior to joining the CTCRE, she was awarded a TRDRP pre-doctoral fellowship for her dissertation work on tobacco and cannabis co-use. Her work examines the multi-level factors that contribute to tobacco and cannabis use spanning from internal psychological factors to social and community-level factors. Dr.
Dr. Philbin is a social and behavioral scientist who uses mixed methods to examine how social policies and clinical practice shapes inclusion and health equity with a focus on substance use and HIV/AIDS. She has worked in the field of health disparities for over 15 years conducting research that explores how community-, institutional-, and state-level factors drive health outcomes among sexual and gender minority (SGM) young people and pregnant people. Dr.
Sabrina Islam, PhD received her doctorate in Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences) with a Graduate Certificate in Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies from the University of Florida. Prior to joining the CTCRE in August 2022, she completed a training fellowship in prevention science and alcohol research at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Islam is interested in qualitative and mixed-methods approaches to studying differential patterns of risk associated with substance use and structural levels of stigma among sexual and gender minority populations.
Dian Gu, PhD, received her doctorate in Health Economics/Health Services Research from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Along with her PhD study, she was a PhD trainee in MD Anderson Cancer Center. In that role, she gained experience in applying health economics to cancer research, collaborating on manuscripts with clinicians on multiple projects concerned with cancer patients’ healthcare utilization, expenditures, and health outcomes.
Assistant Research Scientist, San Francisco VA Medical Center
Medicine
Vira Pravosud, PhD, received her doctorate in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the University of Kentucky. Having obtained an undergraduate degree in Social Work & Sociology and a Master’s degree in Healthcare Management and Administration from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv, Dr. Pravosud came to the U.S. in 2014 as a Fulbright Scholar from Ukraine pursuing more expertise in public health research.
Eileen Han, PhD, received her doctorate in Communication from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. During and after her PhD studies, she mainly conducted qualitative research about social media, with a focus on collective memory and social activism. She published a book about social media and collective memory in China, which was an expansion of her dissertation research.
Sheiphali Gandhi, MD, is a pulmonologist specializing in occupational and environmental respiratory disease. She graduated from Indiana University School of Medicine in 2012. She went to the University of Minnesota for her internal medicine residency and global health chief residency during which she received her Certificate in Tropical Medicine through the Center of Disease Control and American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
Dr. John Kane is an endocrinologist and director of the UCSF Lipid Clinic. He is also an associate director of the UCSF Cardiovascular Research Institute.
Kane's research on lipoprotein metabolism, the management of lipoprotein disorders, and the genetic basis of heart disease and stroke is known worldwide through his publications in refereed journals and book chapters.
Dr. Cohen is an internist and clinical investigator whose research focuses on health outcomes in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder. She is Principal Investigator of the Mind Your Heart Study, a prospective cohort study designed to examine the effects of posttraumatic stress disorder on cardiovascular health.
