Faculty Research Labs

Led by Wael Al-Delaimy, MD, PhD, the California American Indian Tobacco Initiative Evaluation (CAITIE) team is based in the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at UC San Diego.  We are the evaluators of the California Department of Public Health, California Tobacco Control Program's (CTCP) California American Indian Initiative to Reduce Tobacco-Related Disparities statewide funding initiative, referred to as the 'American Indian Initiative'. Learn more.

 

Led by Wael Al-Delaimy, MD, PhD, the Community Health Workers for Advancing Public Health within Immigrant/Refugee and Native American Communities Programs an academic-community collaborative led by The Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science and with involvement of the UC San Diego Extended Studies, as well as the UC San Diego Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute Center for Community Health. Learn more.

 

Led by Wael Al-Delaimy, MD, PhD, the GeoHealth Hub is an international consortium focused on the health impacts of climate change. Funded by the National Institutes for Health, this program is one of seven Global Environmental and Occupational Health (GEOHealth) hubs dedicated to high priority health research, data management, curriculum and material development, training activities and policy support. The project aims to better understand and address human health impacts of climate change Learn more.

 

 

Led by Wael Al-Delaimy, MD, PhD, the mission of the Global Mental Health Initiative (GMHI) at the UC San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science is to advance the recognition, prevention and care of global mental illnesses with a special focus in the Arab countries that are disproportionately suffering from wars, trauma and other risk factors for these illnesses. Learn more.

 

Led by Tala Al-Rousan, MD, MPH, the Displacement and Health Research Center focuses on studying displacement as a social determinant of health. The lab's research centers on equity to guide clinical and public health intervention development and guides policies related to displaced populations. It is the first-of-its-kind at UC San Diego to be composed of refugee, first-generation, immigrant, and other under-represented trainees diversifying the next generation of scientists in health research. Trainees will be future physicians, public health professionals, academics, and social justice advocates devoted to bettering the lives of displaced populations worldwide. Learn more.

The Anderson Lab is led by Cheryl Anderson, PhD, MPH, MS. Dr. Anderson's research focuses on nutrition and chronic disease prevention in underserved populations using observational epidemiologic study designs, randomized clinical trials, and implementation science.  
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Ten-Day Seminar on the Epidemiology and Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke 2022 
Applications Now Open!

This research group works towards identifying climate-related risk factors, effective interventions, and vulnerable populations. Its mission is to communicate their science to inform decision makers and policy to improve public health. Learn More

Led by Dr. Baker and Dr. Lundgren, Agency for All is an international, multi-institutional effort to better understand and promote agency for individuals, communities and local organizations in low- and middle-income countries. 

Dr. Baker is also co-PI on Tipping Point, a large 4.5 year grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to study the impact of a social network based intervention to promote family planning use among married adolescents in rural Niger. Learn More.

Led by Steve Edland, PhD, the MADURA Program (Mentorship for Advancing Diversity in Undergraduate Research on Aging) is a training opportunity funded by the NIH National Institute on Aging for UC San Diego Latinx and other underrepresented minority (URM) group undergraduates. Learn More

Led by Dr. Rebecca Fielding-Miller, the Safer at School Early Alert (SASEA) system is a COVID-19 wastewater detection pilot program for K-12 schools and daycares. Learn More.

 

Led by Dr. Todd Gilmer, the Chronic Illness and Disability Payment System (CDPS) is a diagnostic-based risk adjustment model that is widely used to adjust capitated payments for health plans that enroll Medicaid beneficiaries.

CDPS uses International Classification of Disease (ICD) codes to assign CDPS Categories that indicate illness burden related to major body systems (e.g. Cardiovascular) or types of chronic disease (e.g. Diabetes). Within each major category is a hierarchy reflecting both the clinical severity of the condition and its expected effect on future costs. Each of the hierarchical CDPS Categories is assigned a CDPS weight. CDPS weights are additive across major categories. Learn More.

The MIHA Program is a randomized control trial testing the efficacy of a behavioral weight management intervention with brief and structured counseling on family functioning. The intervention is linguistically and culturally adapted to support familism, biculturalism, and communication competencies in Mexican American families.  Mothers and adult daughters will attend 24 weekly sessions consisting of nutrition and physical activity education, behavior modification techniques, and relationship skills training. Learn More.

Led by Camille Nebeker, EdD and Co-Investigators, Nadir Weibel, PhD, Alan Card, PhD, MPH, and Anthony Magit, MD, MPH, the Research Center for Optimal Digital Ethics (ReCODE) supports researchers and institutions involved in the digital health research process. The goal of ReCODE is to increase awareness of ethical principles and practices from the earliest stages of technology design to the deployment of digital health research. Learn More

James F. Sallis, PhD is Distinguished Professor at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science, University of California San Diego and Professorial Fellow at Australian Catholic University, Melbourne.  His research interests have ranged from promoting physical activity in families. schools (SPARK), health care settings, and universities, to understanding policy and environmental influences on physical activity, nutrition, and obesity.  He was Director of Active Living Research (2001-2015) that helped establish an interdisciplinary field of research to identify effective environmental and policy strategies to increase physical activity.  He is an author of over 700 scientific publications and one of the world's most cited authors (top 0.01%). He is currently focusing on getting research used to create healthier cities. Dr. Sallis is Past-President of Society of Behavioral Medicine and member of the National Academy of Medicine.

This widely-used website contains many resources developed over decades of research that can be used by researchers, practitioners, and advocates. Our research groups have mainly studied physical activity, with some studies related to nutrition, obesity, and tobacco control. There are papers on international studies, health disparities, ecological models of behavior, interventions, and measurement development. Collaborative projects led by others included additional topics such as sun safety and mental health. Learn More

Dr. Xin Tu is a Professor of Biostatistics in the Division of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics. His group specilizes in semiparametric and machine learning models and their applications to mental health and psychosocial research, and has extensive collaborations with investigators and multiple centers at UC San Diego.  The group’s statistical methodologic research focuses on models for between-subject attributes, a new paradigm for facilitating infererence for classic statistical models for within-subject attributes, as well as modeling emerging high-dimensional data arising in biomedical and network research.