On January 7, 2025, NCIRE-supported cardiology Principal Investigator, Dr. Joseph Yang, performed the first ever percutaneous coronary intervention in the Northern California VA Health Care System at the Mather VA Hospital, in conjunction with the cardiac catheterization laboratory team led by Drs. Amogh Bhat and Marty Denny.

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Dr. Yang and his fellow NCIRE-supported colleague, Dr. Jeffrey Zimmet, from San Francisco VA have been collaborating with the cardiac catheterization team at Mather VA to further expand care for veterans in the region. Additionally, by strengthening the clinical collaboration with their colleagues in the Northern California VAHCS, the ongoing research efforts will be further expanded with enrollment in clinical trials at SFVA.

Congratulations to NCIRE-supported Principal Investigator, Dr. Alexander K. Smith, for receiving the Award for Excellence in Scientific Research in Palliative Care at the Annual Assembly of Hospice and Palliative Medicine in Denver, on Saturday February 8th.  Dr. Smith regaled the audience with a song during his acceptance speech, which you can view online here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF2KxAzjxK8

Congratulations to NCIRE-supported Principal Investigator, Dr. Duygu Tosun-Turgut, for her induction into the 2025 Class of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows at its induction ceremony on March 31st!

Election to the AIMBE College of Fellows is among the highest professional distinctions granted to medical and biological engineers, comprised of the top two percent of engineers in these fields. College membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to "engineering and medicine research, practice, or education” and to "the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of medical and biological engineering or developing/implementing innovative approaches to bioengineering education."

Dr. Karen Seal is the Chief of Integrative Health and serves as the Medical Director of the Integrated Pain Team (IPT), an interdisciplinary clinic model first established at the San Francisco VA Health Care System (SFVAHCS) for Veterans with chronic pain and opioid dependence.

NCIRE-supported Principal Investigator and Board Member, Dr. Karen Seal is the senior author of the article in JAMA titled, “Care Models to Improve Pain and Reduce Opioids Among Patients Prescribed Long-Term Opioid Therapy: The VOICE Randomized Clinical Trial”. In the VOICE trial—among 820 veterans at 10 VA sites across the country—the SFVAHCS IPT model consisting of a medical provider with expertise in pain management, a pain pharmacist, and pain psychologist was equally effective as another care model (Pharmacist Collaborative Management) in reducing pain and opioid dosage in Veterans. The SFVAHCS IPT clinic is staffed by Elizabeth Gregg, NP (Clinical Director); Kim Banks, NP; Donovan Jenkins, NP; Erin Watson, PsyD; Payal Mapara, PsyD; Cecelia Bess, PhD; Emily Yao, Pharm D; and Nisha Iyer, Pharm D. Other VOICE IPT clinicians were Christina Tat, Pharm D; Sara Librodo, Pharm D; Elizabeth Son, Pharm D; and Caitlin Garvey, NP.

The article was also co-authored by NCIRE-supported Principal Investigators Drs. Jennifer Manual, Brian Borsari, Natalie Purcell, and Ellen Herbst.

NCIRE-supported Principal Investigators Drs. Natalie Purcell, Shira Maguen, Jennifer Manuel, and Board Member Dr. Karen Seal co-published the following articles concerning the impact of COVID-19 on the relationships between health care workers, their patients, and their workplace.:

“When clinicians and patients disagree on vaccination: what primary care clinicians can learn from COVID-19-vaccine-hesitant patients about communication, trust, and relationships in healthcare” (Purcell, Seal, Maguen) https://bmcprimcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12875-024-02665-1

“Moral injury and mental health in healthcare workers are linked to organizational culture and modifiable workplace conditions: Results of a national, mixed-methods study conducted at Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centers during the COVID-19 pandemic” (Purcell, Seal, Manuel) https://journals.plos.org/mentalhealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmen.0000085

NCIRE-supported Principal Investigator, Dr. Alexander K. Smith, co-published "By the Time We Knew …”: Poetic Analysis of End-of-Life Caregiving Experiences for Rapidly Progressive and Slower-Duration Dementia Syndromes in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society (JAGS).

This secondary qualitative analysis compares end-of-life experiences for caregivers of decedents with different dementia subtypes. It includes 10 poems whittled from interview transcripts and a new conceptual model of dementia end-of-life experience. The interdisciplinary team includes former MSTAR students, postdocs, GBHI Atlantic Fellows, and faculty colleagues across UCSF and the U.S.

NCIRE Board Member, Dr. Louise C. Walter, and her fellow NCIRE-supported investigators, Drs. John Boscardin, Sei J. Lee, Kenneth E. Covinsky, and Alexander K. Smith join a research team to investigate whether the Walter Index predicts posthospitalization mortality in older adults outside the U.S.

The Walter Index is a widely used prognostic tool for assessing 12-month mortality risk among hospitalized older adults. Developed in the US in 2001, its accuracy in contemporary non-US contexts is unclear. The research team evaluates the external validity of the Walter Index in predicting posthospitalization mortality risk in Brazilian older adult inpatients.

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Deception is a universal human behavior. Yet longstanding skepticism about the validity of measures used to characterize the biological mechanisms underlying deceptive behavior has relegated such studies to the scientific periphery.

NCIRE-supported Principal Investigator, Dr. Andrew Kayser, and his colleagues dive into the fringe by applying machine learning methods and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure human deception.

In 2024, NCIRE-supported Principal Investigator, Dr. Judith Ford, had the bittersweet honor to fulfil the role of Dr.  Herbert Pardes, founding president of Brain & Behavior Research Foundation’s (BBRF) Scientific Council, after his passing in April of last year. With the esteemed support of the BBRF Board, Dr. Ford was selected to lead her council colleagues into its new chapter.

The Winter 2025 issue of BBRF’s magazine Brain & Behavior introduces the new BBRF Scientific Council President, Dr. Judith Ford, in its BBRF Leadership story here: https://bbrfoundation.org/sites/default/files/bb-magazine-february-2025_0.pdf

The Northern California Institute for Research and Education, Inc. (NCIRE) is excited to welcome new Board members, Drs. Salomeh Keyhani and Karen Seal, to its Board of Directors!

Dr. Salomeh Keyhani is a Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Staff Physician and Investigator at the San Francisco VA Health Care System (SFVAHCS). She is also the Director of the Center for Data to Discovery and Delivery Innovation (3DI), a VA-funded Center of Innovation focused on improving health and health care delivery.

Dr. Karen Seal is the Service Chief of Integrative Health at SFVAHCS, and Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry in Residence at UCSF. She serves in leadership roles with the 3DI Center for Innovation and NCIRE’s Women Veterans Research Collaborative, through which she is mentoring the next generation of health services researchers.

The Northern California Institute for Research and Education, Inc. (NCIRE) is excited to endorse our supported Principal Investigators (PIs), Drs. Karen Seal and Carolyn Gibson, in their creation of the Women Veterans Research Collaborative!

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The Women Veterans Research Collaborative (WVRC) is a women-led team of health services clinician researchers and project management staff focused on advancing comprehensive, trauma-informed health care for women Veterans. WVRC specializes in priority areas for women Veterans like chronic pain, PTSD, opioid dependence, menopause-related health, sleep disorders, and complementary and integrative health interventions, spearheaded by WVRC’s nationally recognized experts.

NCIRE-supported Principal Investigators, Drs. Rebecca Sudore and Michael Steinman, co-published an article in the Journal of General Internal Medicine titled “eConsultation for Deprescribing Among Older Adults: Clinician Perspectives on Implementation Barriers and Facilitators”.

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Along with a research team led by fellow University of California, San Francisco colleague, Dr. Matthew Growdon, Sudore and Steinman investigated clinician perspectives on barriers/facilitators of using eConsults for deprescribing among older adults within a university health network.

NCIRE-supported Principal Investigators, Drs. Alexander Smith and Rebecca Sudore, co-published a paper in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine titled “Social Isolation and Mortality in Adults With Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease”.

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Smith and Sudore joined researchers, led by fellow University of California, San Francisco colleague Dr. Angela Suen, in the cohort study to determine the impact of social isolation on individuals with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). The study used 2006-2022 data from the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) for adults aged 51 years or older, which is conducted biennially until death.​

Congratulations to NCIRE-supported Principal Investigator and Board Member, Dr. Kristine Yaffe and colleagues who recently received new funding through the National Institutes on Health’s National Institute on Aging (NIH/NIA) to study the connection between chemical exposure and dementia risks.

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Dr. Yaffe, through her appointment at the University of California, San Francisco, joins a team of researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at Pennsylvania, Northwestern University, and Emory University, in a research study to better understand how day-to-day exposures to chemicals earlier in life can contribute to conditions like Alzheimer’s disease later on.

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The study will use almost four decades of data pulled from participants of the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study, which launched in 1983, many of whom were on average 25 years old when they joined the study that has followed them into their 60s.

NCIRE-supported Principal Investigator, Dr. Stephen Thaddeus Connelly, joins Dr. Urban Keirnan on his show Decoding Health to discuss his specialization as an Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon in diagnosing and treating joint issues, highlighting the signs and solutions for common problems. Dr. Connelly also details the impact of sleep issues on neurodegenerative conditions, explaining how changes in the brain occur during different sleep phases and why these stages are crucial for overall health.

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NCIRE-supported Principal Investigator and NCIRE Board Member, Dr. Bruce Ovbiagele, joins the Abridge Research Collaborative’s (ARC) inaugural steering committee that will oversee the first clinical research collaboration dedicated to studying the impact of ambient AI across five key focus areas: clinician experience, patient experience, healthcare costs, outcomes, and health equity. This independent research effort will bring together experts across academia, professional well-being, informatics, health operations, and policy. The goal is to provide evidence-driven guidance on the use of ambient AI as it becomes ubiquitous in clinical settings.

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NCIRE-supported Principal Investigator, Dr. Michael Steinman, and his colleague, Dr. Matthew Growdon, were quoted in the New York Times article, ‘The Painkiller Used for Just About Anything’. The article tackled the issue of the extensive and growing use of gabapentin—much of it for uses not approved by FDA and with little evidence.

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/17/health/gabapentin-seniors-pain.html

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Dr. Steinman was also featured in a national NPR radio segment "Here and Now" discussing the overuse of gabapentin.

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Listen here: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2024/09/10/gabapentin-prescription

Congratulations to NCIRE-supported Principal Investigator, Dr. Michael Steinman, for receiving the George F. Archambault Award from the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists!

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The Archambault Award is the Society’s highest honor, conferred to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to consultant or senior care pharmacy practice through one or more specific areas of achievement. Winners of this award are selected by past Archambault Award recipients.

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NCIRE-supported Principal Investigator Dr. Judith Ford shares vital information about metabolic psychiatry in Season 9 Episode 1 of the PBS program ‘Healthy Minds with Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein’.

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Congratulations to NCIRE-supported Principal Investigator Dr. Daniel Mathalon for being recognized by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) with its J. Elliott Royer Award for Excellence in Psychiatry!

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The Royer Award for Excellence in Academic Psychiatry is awarded to Dr. Daniel Mathalon in recognition of his long track record of outstanding contributions as a mentor, educator, clinician, and researcher to the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (DPBS) and the San Francisco VA Health Care System (SFVAHCS).

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The award will be presented at the UCSF Psychiatry faculty meeting on September 17, 2024.

Congratulations to NCIRE-supported Principal Investigator Dr. Jeffrey Zimmet and his research team for setting another record-breaking month in July 2024 with 134 subjects enrolled, and a total of 1,712 randomized subjects for the IMPROVE Study at the San Francisco VA Health Care System site. This marks the fourth consecutive month with more than 100 randomize subjects.

NCIRE-supported Principal Investigators Drs. Salomeh Keyhani and Carolyn Gibson will be the Director and Associate Director, respectively, of the Center for Data to Discovery and Delivery Innovation (3DI), a new Health Systems Research Center of Innovation (COIN) funded by the San Francisco VA Health Care System (SFVAHCS) through an award from the Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Research and Development.

3DI is focused on improving health by supporting research and training that advance patient-centered health behavior change. The Center brings together a multidisciplinary group of 25 core investigators from the School of Medicine and the School of Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). The Center will partner with numerous centers, programs, and institutes across UCSF including the UCSF institute for Health Policy Studies, the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Health, and the UCSF UC Berkeley Joint Program in Computational Precision Health.

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The Center will support quantitative and qualitative methodologic resources, Veteran engagement in all stages of the research process, health services mentorship and training, and a national network focused on fostering collaborations and community around research on behavior change.

3DI will provide much needed infrastructure to advance Health Systems Research and health care transformation within the SFVAHCS, VISN 21, and National VA.

VA funds COINs to reward and advance research that has the greatest possible impact on improving Veteran health.

Salomeh Keyhani, MD is a primary care provider and UCSF Professor of Medicine based at the SFVAHCS. She is currently leading multiple studies examining the health effects of cannabis and gaps in health care delivery related to cannabis use.

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Carolyn Gibson, PhD, MPH is a Clinical Research Psychologist at SFVAHCS and Assistant Professor in the UCSF Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences. Her research focuses on women’s physical and mental health related to menopause and aging.