Spotlight: Scott Comulada, DrPH

Scott Comulada, DrPh, is an Associate Professor-in-Residence at the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences with a secondary appointment in the Department of Health Policy and Management. He is our Methods Core Co-Director and an Analytic Core Project Lead for the Adolescent Trials Network U19 (ATN CARES). One childhood hobby, in particular, hinted at his future career path in behavioral research and statistics. Scott was fascinated by insects at an early age, sitting and recording their behavior and travel patterns in a notebook in his backyard. It is worth noting a similar inclination towards entomology as Gary Larson, the “Far Side” cartoonist which may have also hinted at his aspiration for cartooning. He had a brief stint as a cartoonist for the Daily Bruin while studying biostatistics at UCLA that featured a main character named “Jae”. Rumor has it that the name was inspired by the Methods Core Associate Director (Sung-Jae Lee). Eventually, Scott realized it was much easier to be a researcher than to be funny on a regular basis. The rest is history.

A career in public health was heavily influenced by Scott’s parents who always emphasized the rewards of a career in service, especially in the health field as Scott’s father was a dentist and his mother was a nurse. Scott’s public health service began as a statistician, pursuing graduate studies in biostatistics focused on longitudinal data analysis, shaped by collaboration on HIV studies that collected intervention data over time and Dr. Robert Weiss, one of his favorite mentors. While providing statistical support on large-scale HIV studies, Scott became increasingly interested in the data collection process. This led to his current research portfolio of projects that incorporate mHealth data collection systems and tools into behavioral interventions. Specifically, he looks for ways to improve mHealth systems to collect new types of data and provide new functionality to enhance behavioral interventions. Scott recently completed a pilot study in South Africa where an mHealth system was developed to monitor the linkage of newly-diagnosed people living with HIV (PLH) to care. The system prompted follow-up by community health workers when PLH failed to link to care.

Outside of work, Scott enjoys spending time with his family, playing the piano, and staying physically active. One of his favorite hobbies is martial arts, probably for the same reason he is drawn to academia. New insight is gained and new skills are developed every time one trains. For his next portfolio of research projects, Scott would like to delve into lifestyle interventions that address physical, mental, and spiritual needs across multiple diseases. He is not sure what role he will play, perhaps as a statistician, mHealth expert, or budding interventionist. There are a few things that Scott does know: a foundation in statistics provides a fantastic foundation to “play in everyone’s backyard”, as aptly stated by John Tukey, a famous statistician. While this applies to data analysis, Scott sees a statistical background as a prerogative to play different roles. He also sees CHIPTS as a valuable gateway to cross-disciplinary research, infrastructure, and some pretty large backyards.

 

Each month, we’re featuring a member of our CHIPTS family and their work! To see past spotlights, check them out on the spotlights page and make sure to check back to see who we feature next!

Spotlight: Norweeta Milburn, PhD

Norweeta Milburn, PhD is a Professor-in-Residence in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences in the Division of Population Behavioral Health at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.  She also is the Director of the CHIPTS Development Core.

Norweeta obtained her PhD in Community Psychology from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor).  After earning her degree, she moved to Washington, DC where she began her teaching and research career.   Then in 1990, she accepted a faculty position with Hofstra University in New York, as an Associate Professor of Psychology.  From the beginning, Norweeta’s research interest has always been concentrated on working with underserved and marginalized groups, particularly among those most impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.  Her research specifically focuses on populations who are homeless and from ethnic/racial minority backgrounds with mental health and substance abuse problems.

Since joining UCLA in 1999, she has led or co-led several studies funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, and National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.  Norweeta recently completed a study that involved adapting the STRIVE (Support to Reunite, Involve, and Value Each Other) intervention and testing its efficacy for young people re-entering communities from the juvenile justice system. Currently, she leads the Health Disparities Core funded by the California HIV/AIDS Research Program that is part of the UCLA Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) and AIDS Institute.  Among the main goals of the Health Disparities Core is to build and sustain collaborative partnerships between research and at-risk vulnerable communities in Los Angeles County and to facilitate culturally-appropriate outreach and dissemination of research projects to communities that are highly impacted by HIV.  Additionally, Norweeta is a Co-Principal Investigator of a NIDA-funded R25 grant, the UCLA HIV/AIDS, Substance Abuse, and Trauma Training Program (HA-STTP).  The program trains and provides mentorship to a national cohort of early career ethnic and culturally diverse clinician researchers and post-doctoral scholars to conduct research on reducing substance abuse and HIV transmission in underserved populations at risk for traumatic stress and health disparities.

All of Norweeta’s research, training, and community engagement work are anchored within the context of addressing health disparities in mental illness and drug abuse treatment outcomes, and HIV prevention to promote global health and well-being of adolescents and their families.  Norweeta is interested in examining how parental practices, and resources and behaviors with the context of the community system of care can help underserved adolescents develop into healthy functioning adults. Her goal is to develop replicable, sustainable family interventions for underserved adolescents to reduce their risk for HIV, substance abuse and mental illness.

Though work seems to encompass a lot of her life, Norweeta always makes time for her family, which includes her loving spouse and 25 year-old daughter.  She enjoys taking walks, going camping, and hiking. Norweeta truly loves living on the West Coast with all the national parks and other wonderful outdoor spaces! One of her personal life goals is to get in at least one more white water rafting trip before she is too old to get in and out of the raft.

Each month, we’re featuring a member of our CHIPTS family and their work! To see past spotlights, check them out on the spotlights page and make sure to check back to see who we feature next!

Spotlight: Latoya Small, MSW, PhD

Latoya Small, MSW, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Luskin School of Public Affairs, Department of Social Welfare and is part of the Policy Impact Core at CHIPTS.  Her research examines how social determinants of health are associated with HIV treatment outcomes in both the U.S. and Sub-Saharan Africa.  More specifically, her work aims to develop evidence-based interventions focused on HIV and behavioral health among women and children, within the context of poverty.  Currently, Latoya has a project that is looking at how poverty, stress, parenting, and mental health factors impact adherence to HIV medical services among Black women in urban Los Angeles.

Prior to her research career, she provided direct clinical services for almost 10 years.  As a clinical social worker, Latoya provided mental health services to children and families in her hometown of South Los Angeles and later worked with persons who had severe and persistent mental illness, in a state psychiatric facility. Her international social work began when she worked with children in foster care in the United Kingdom. Afterwards, she moved to South Africa where she gained her first experience in conducting HIV research among vulnerable youth. These experiences laid the foundation for her health disparities research on HIV and behavioral health.

In 2015, Latoya received funding from the International AIDS Society to lead a two-year study entitled, “VUKA EKHAYA: A Take Home Family Intervention to Improve Adherence and Reduce Behavioral Risk among Perinatally HIV-Infected Youth.” This intervention was informed by community-based participatory research and aimed to address the need for empirically-informed and sustainable HIV care approaches for perinatally HIV-infected youth in Durban, South Africa. The study was a culturally-informed, cartoon-based family intervention designed for low-literacy populations, targeting mental health and risk behaviors of seropositive underserved youth.

Currently, Latoya is conducting a CHIPTS-funded pilot study, examining the relationship between mental health and treatment adherence for African American women living with HIV in urban Los Angeles. Charged by the recent policies that perpetuate inequities and health disparities faced by transgender people, Latoya adapted her research to include the needs of the transgender women and children, to better understand their unique experiences. This led her to receiving a UCLA junior faculty award to explore whether exposure to violence, discrimination, and health differ by race among transgender persons across different regions of the United States.

When she is not working, Latoya enjoys reacquainting herself with Los Angeles beaches, exploring taco stands, and hiking in Griffith Park.

Each month, we’re featuring a member of our CHIPTS family and their work! To see past spotlights, check them out on the spotlights page and make sure to check back to see who we feature next!

Spotlight: Pamina M. Gorbach, MHS, DrPH

Pamina M. Gorbach, MHS, DrPH, is a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and Division of Infectious Diseases in the David Geffen School of Medicine. Her research focuses on bio-behavioral dynamics of sexual health, with a focus on HIV transmission, acquisition and progression, especially around substance abuse.  She is a member of the CHIPTS Combination Prevention Core, the Director of the Biobehavioral Assessment Research Center, and Co-Director of Biobehavioral Epidemiology and Substance Use Program Section of the Center for AIDS Research.  While her training began in reproductive health, she was drawn to biobehavioral epidemiology during her infectious disease fellowship at the University of Washington (UW) where she discovered the value of merging behavioral, clinical, and laboratory science for global HIV prevention and control.

Pamina has deep roots in global infectious disease from when she lived in India as a child while her father studied diarrheal disease and other infectious diseases. In the mid 1990’s, while a fellow at UW, Pamina went to Cambodia as part of a team to add behavioral research to the first bio-behavioral surveillance survey of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.  There, she witnessed firsthand the devastating effects of the HIV epidemic on a population and how young female sex workers were particularly impacted. To this day, she continues to do work in Cambodia and is now the PI of the UCLA/Cambodia HIV/AIDS Training Program in Data Management and Analysis, which brings Cambodian scholars to UCLA for advance degree training in epidemiology.

Moving to Southern California in 1999, Pamina turned her focus to the growing domestic HIV epidemic, especially substance-using men who have sex with men (MSM).  She started her first cohort of MSM with acute HIV infection in 2000.  Now, with Dr. Steve Shoptaw, she heads her third cohort called the mSTUDY – a NIDA funded research platform that follows 514 HIV positive and HIV negative young and highly diverse men, many of whom are active substance users.  Behavioral, clinical, and laboratory data are collected from these men every six months at the Los Angeles LGBT Center and the UCLA Vine St Clinic. Collaborations are welcomed with scientists on and off campus engaged in new high impact HIV science that can bring fresh approaches to the mSTUDY and outside expertise to stimulate new research in line with the latest NIH HIV priorities.

Using a model of leadership from within, Pamina teamed up with Suzanne Siminski from Frontier Science in 2017 to lead a U24 consortium of the nine National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) HIV/AIDS cohorts including the mSTUDY entitled Collaborating Consortium of Cohorts Producing NIDA Opportunities (C3PNO).  The purpose of C3PNO is to manage and stimulate use of the data generated from these U01 cohorts to address high priority research on HIV/AIDS in the context of substance abuse. C3PNO fosters cutting-edge science powered by the cohorts combined sample size of over 12,000 active participants and data for over 20,000 historical participants.

Pamina is deeply committed to training the next generation of researchers in the field of HIV-related biobehavioral research.  She is presently the Co-PI of the UCLA Postdoctoral Fellowship Training Program in Global HIV Prevention Research with Dr. Judith Currier for behavioral scientists and infectious disease specialists. Pamina serves as an advisor to numerous masters and doctoral students and enjoys mentoring emerging scholars. Her work with the HIV research networks has brought her global health experience in Cambodia, Vietnam, Peru, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Mali, Malawi, South Africa, and Ghana.

In her spare time, Pamina enjoys fun and adventurous activities with her husband, 10 year old twins, and two dogs. She is happiest when hopping over small fences with her daughter on their ponies. They say, “Barn hair don’t care!”

Each month, we’re featuring a member of our CHIPTS family and their work! To see past spotlights, check them out on the spotlights page and make sure to check back to see who we feature next!

Spotlight: Corrina Moucheraud, ScD, MPH

Corrina Moucheraud, MPH, ScD is an Assistant Professor in the Fielding School of Public Health, in the Department of Health Policy and Management and her research focuses on global health policy and systems. She uses quantitative and qualitative data to answer questions about how to effectively and equitably deliver high-quality health care in low-resource settings.

Corrina grew up in New York City and was obsessed with disease epidemics from a young age. She had planned to become a doctor with Doctors Without Borders and  had even spent time after school during her teenage years as a volunteer in their office.  Eventually, Corrina realized that her true love was health – so after a short-lived stint of undergrad pre-med, she began happily studying and working in global public health. She received her Master of Public Health degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in Health Behavior as well as her Doctor of Science degree from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in Global Health and Population.

Currently, Corrina participates in an ongoing collaboration between faculty at the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine and partners in Malawi, focused on care for HIV and other chronic diseases such as cervical cancer and hypertension in the HIV-positive population. Her research on cervical cancer in Malawi is the focus of a recent career development award (KL2) from the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI).

Corrina also serves as Co-Principal Investigator of a project that involves CHIPTS faculty Arleen Leibowitz, Ian Holloway and Nina Harawa, alongside investigators from the University of Southern California, and in partnership with the Los Angeles County Department of HIV and STI Programs (DHSP).  The project aims to examine approaches for “getting to zero” among men who have sex with men in Los Angeles County. This is an exciting opportunity that applies research methods to inform real-world planning and priority-setting and has the potential to have meaningful impact on service planning in Los Angeles.  This research is supported by a seed grant from the UCLA AIDS Institute, UCLA Center for AIDS Research (AI28697) and USC Molecular Microbiology and Immunology.

As a native of another large and diverse city, Corrina loves living in Los Angeles. She and her partner moved here in 2015, and have been avid weekend explorers ever since. They particularly enjoy sights and experiences that are off the beaten track, so they are always looking for suggestions of eccentric, unusual or underappreciated gems in the LA area!

Each month, we’re featuring a member of our CHIPTS family and their work! To see past spotlights, check them out on the spotlights page and make sure to check back to see who we feature next!

Spotlight: Chunqing Lin, PhD

Chunqing Lin, PhD, is a Core Scientist in the Methods Core at CHIPTS.  She is currently an Assistant Professor-in-Residence in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA Semel Institute Center for Community Health. Her primary research interest is in implementation science in healthcare settings, which was cultivated during her doctoral dissertation study that examined the implementation issues of methadone maintenance therapy (MMT) programs in China. After receiving her doctoral degree, she served as Project Director and Co-Investigator of several NIH-funded intervention trials in China and Vietnam.

In 2013, she received a Mentored Research Scientist Development Award (K award) to study implementation science and intervention delivery in healthcare settings. She applied conjoint analysis to model hospital stakeholders’ decision-making in adoption of evidence-based intervention models and utilized bottleneck analysis to locate the weakest link in the dissemination of intervention supplies within hospitals. Chunqing continues to broaden her research in implementation science through other research activities on health service integration and improvement including a pilot grant to map the provision of prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV services and explore strategies to engage migrant women with HIV in the PMTCT service cascade in China.

She is also conducting another pilot study to identify the barriers to substance use and mental health-related service provision among men who have sex with men and to devise strategies to provide integrated mental health and substance use prevention, diagnosis and care in primary care settings. Inspired by the decentralization of MMT services in Vietnam, she recently proposed an R34 to use structured implementation science methodologies to guide the development of an intervention model focusing on process optimization of service decentralization.

Outside of her work, Chunqing is an adventurous eater, embracing exotic and authentic food from across the world, and enjoys imitating restaurant dishes at home. Photography has always been one of her favorite hobbies and she has a talent for taking macro close-ups of flowers.

Each month, we’re featuring a member of our CHIPTS family and their work! To see past spotlights, check them out on the spotlights page and make sure to check back to see who we feature next!

Spotlight: Jeanne Miranda, PhD

Jeanne Miranda, PhD, is Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Medicine and the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA and is a core scientist in the Combination Prevention Core at CHIPTS. Her major research contributions have been in evaluating the impact of mental health care for ethnic minority communities. She conducted a trial of treatment of depression in impoverished minority patients at San Francisco General Hospital.  From that trial, she found that traditional care for depression supplemented by case management offered additional benefits for Latino patients but not for African American and white participants. She has also studied the impact of care for depression in low-income, minority women screened through county entitlement programs in the Washington DC area. This study found that short-term care for depression is effective for impoverished women, but outreach is necessary to engage these women in care. Jeanne has received several awards for her work, including the Team Science Award from the Association for Clinical and Translational Science and the 2015 UCLA Community Program of the Year – Landmark Award, for her Community Partners in Care project.

Jeanne was an investigator in one of the first studies of HIV in homeless populations published in 1994 and has recently returned to HIV research. She is conducting a pilot investigation of a mental health resilience intervention in impoverished young women in Uganda, 54% of whom are HIV positive. She is combining an intervention to support HIV treatment compliance with a resilience intervention that is aimed at reducing depression and increasing motivation. She is also studying government programs, such as a program of micro-finance funded by the Ugandan government, to determine the best way to get social programs to poor youth in Uganda.

In addition, Jeanne is currently working with two community partners, TIES for Families and the Center for Adoption Support and Education to evaluate an intervention her team developed to provide care for families adopting older children from foster care. She and her colleagues recently finished a book about this therapy that will be published in Summer 2018.

When not at work, Jeanne enjoys spending time with her three children and two granddaughters. She is an avid cook. She brings her love of cooking to her political activism. She is a member of the political group Team TO Resist and Rise where she plans fundraisers and is co-lead of the team that cooks for fundraising events. She also enjoys photography, bringing back many wonderful pictures from Uganda, some of which decorate her suite of offices in the Wilshire building.

Each month, we’re featuring a member of our CHIPTS family and their work! To see past spotlights, check them out on the spotlights page and make sure to check back to see who we feature next!

Feature Spotlight: Damilola Jolayemi, MSc

Damilola Jolayemi, MSc is the Program Coordinator for the Combination Prevention Core at UCLA CHIPTS. Her interest in HIV began while she was pursuing her Master of Science in Global Health at Northwestern University. Damilola, an American of Nigerian origin, was motivated to study global health because she was interested in addressing and alleviating the multiple burden of diseases, including HIV, in Africa. Her education and experience over the years made her aware that the disparities that exist in her native country were also present in US.

At the end of her master’s program, Damilola worked with OMNI Med, an organization in Uganda focused on improving health outcomes through community health education and workers’ training in the interior region of Central Uganda. As part of her practicum project, Damilola developed an HIV training curriculum for community health workers and community members, aimed at increasing their knowledge around HIV testing, identification, treatment and prevention.

During her one month in Uganda, Damilola also conducted focus groups with community health workers to understand and dispel myths and beliefs surrounding HIV. She also spent time at the local hospital’s ART clinic, HIV testing and counseling center, immunization center, maternity ward, and pharmacy to witness the medical care and experiences of people living with HIV.  Through this experience, she made strong connections with health providers and local HIV organizations that gave her insight into the challenges of healthcare access within the region. Given her observations, experience and intrinsic desire to improve health outcomes in resource poor settings, Damilola hopes to further her path in research and work towards a career in infectious diseases prevention.

As a new member of CHIPTS, Damilola is excited to learn more about HIV/AIDS, engage with community members, and plan programs within CHIPTS. Prior to joining CHIPTS, Damilola was an elementary school educator and taught computer science literacy. She loves traveling, hiking, painting landscapes and photography.

Each month, we’re featuring a member of our CHIPTS family and their work! To see past spotlights, check them out on the spotlights page  and make sure to check back to see who we feature next!

Feature Spotlight: Ronald Brooks, PhD

Ronald Brooks, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at UCLA and a core scientist in the Combination Prevention Core at CHIPTS.  He began working in the field of HIV as a part-time statistician at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and was the first to examine the geographic distribution of HIV/AIDS cases among Latinos living in Los Angeles County in relation to available HIV/AIDS services within the County’s health districts.  After receiving his doctoral degree in Urban Planning, he accepted a research fellowship in the Department of Epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.  There he began his HIV research career examining cultural characteristics as predictors of HIV risk behaviors among Latino men with support from the UCLA Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) and AIDS Institute.  As a bicultural Mexican-American gay man, Ron has continued to focus his research on HIV disparities affecting racial and ethnic sexual minority men.

Ron’s current research focuses on the use of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV prevention among racial/ethnic gay and bisexual men and trans women.  He began his PrEP research with a small but important study examining the acceptability of PrEP among HIV discordant racial/ethnic gay male couples in Los Angeles.  Since then he has expanded his research to examine PrEP acceptability and barriers to uptake among Black men who have sex with men (MSM). His most recent study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, is looking at the experiences of PrEP-related stigma among Latino and Black MSM.  This study is entitled the LA PrEP Stories project and is examining how PrEP-related stigma may influence PrEP adoption, persistence, adherence, and the dissemination of PrEP information within the social networks of Black and Latino MSM.  With supplemental funding from the California Community Foundation, Ron has expanded his current project to include Latina and Black trans women.

For Ron, it is the real life experiences and stories of participants in his research projects that have continuously inspired him and fueled his commitment to helping to end the HIV epidemic in racial/ethnic minority communities. He enjoys working with community-based organizations and helping them build their capacity to implement and evaluate their HIV prevention and treatment programs and increase their impact on the community.

When he has break from work, Ron enjoys spending time with close friends in Palm Springs.  For him the tranquility of the desert allows him to re-energize himself for his work at UCLA.  His culinary talents include preparing hearty, traditional Mexican dishes.  He is also an avid viewer of HGTV’s House Hunters International and enjoys watching professional tennis.

Each month, we’re featuring a member of our CHIPTS family and their work! To see past spotlights, check them out on the spotlights page and make sure to check back to see who we feature next!

Feature Spotlight: Nina Harawa, PhD, MPH

Dr. Nina Harawa co-directs the Policy Impact Core at CHIPTS.  She is an Associate Professor-in-Residence with the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a Professor with Charles R. Drew University (CDU) of Medicine and Science, where she leads CDU’s HIV Cluster.  She also co-directs the National Coordinating Center for the NIA-funded Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research (RCMAR) at UCLA.

Trained in epidemiology, Dr. Harawa’s research involves understanding trends in HIV and other sexually transmitted infections and developing effective, culturally relevant interventions for prevention, care, and treatment.  She has conducted innovative research with a wide variety of populations including those marginalized due to their status as racial and/or sexual and gender minorities.  Much of this work has involved partnering with local governmental and community organizations in order to address health issues in populations that experience major health disparities.  She currently co-leads two multi-site research studies funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse.  One examines the impacts of incarceration and related interventions and policies on HIV in Black men who have sex with men (MSM).  The other will test an intervention to promote linkage to and retention in HIV care for young MSM following release from jail.

Most recently, Dr. Harawa was awarded a competitive One Step Ahead award from the California HIV/AIDS Research Program for her innovative proposal to test a new intervention to engage at-risk MSM and transgender women in pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), HIV/STI/Hepatitis C testing, and social services following release from jail.  Their Mobile Enhanced Prevention Support (MEPS) intervention for people leaving jail combines a new mobile app with incentives and peer navigation to encourage prevention during and following reentry.

She enjoys jazz, visual arts, poetry, and yoga.  Thanks to her husband, who is the Editor of The Ring magazine, she knows more about boxing than you would ever expect of an epidemiologist.

Each month, we’re featuring a member of our CHIPTS family and their work! To see past spotlights, check them out on the spotlights page  and make sure to check back to see who we feature next!