Urmimala Sarkar, MD, MPH
Urmimala Sarkar MD, MPH is Associate Chair for Faculty Experience for the Department of Medicine, Professor of Medicine at UCSF in the Division of General Internal Medicine, Associate Director of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations, and a primary care physician at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital’s Richard H. Fine People's Clinic.
Dr. Sarkar’s work centers on innovating for health equity and improving safety and quality of outpatient care for everyone, especially historically marginalized populations. Her expertise spans topics including medical errors and patient safety, diabetes, and cancer prevention and survivorship. Dr. Sarkar’s research is collaborative and intersects with methods found in human centered design, human factors engineering, data science, health services research, and implementation science.
Dr. Sarkar’s research focuses on:
(1) Patient Safety in outpatient settings, including adverse drug events, missed and delayed diagnosis, and failures of treatment monitoring
(2) Digital Health innovations to improve the safety and quality of outpatient care
(3) Social Media research for behavior change
(4) Safety-net implementation of evidence-based digital health information technology in real-world, care settings.
(5) Chronic Diseases
Funding
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
California Health Care Foundation
National Cancer Institute
Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute
Dr. Sarkar is also supported by an unrestricted gift from the Doctors Company Foundation. She has received prior funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Blue Shield of California Foundation, the Center for Care Innovation, the US Food and Drug Administration, the Commonwealth Fund, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She held contract funding from AppliedVR, InquisitHealth, and Somnology.
Dr. Sarkar serves as a scientific/expert advisor for nonprofit organizations HealthTech 4 Medicaid (volunteer) and for HopeLab (volunteer). She is a member of the American Medical Association’s Equity and Innovation Advisory Group (honoraria) and is on the Board of Directors of the Collaborative for Accountability and Improvement (volunteer). She is an advisor for Waymark (shares) and for Ceteri Capital I GP, LLC (shares). She has been a clinical advisor for Omada Health (honoraria), and an advisory board member for Doximity (honoraria, stock).
Elaine Khoong, MD, MS
Elaine Khoong, MD, MS is an implementation scientist, clinician informaticist, health services researcher, and practicing general internist at San Francisco General Hospital. Dr. Khoong is the subject matter expert guiding quality improvement efforts to improve diabetes and hypertension outcomes in primary care, which includes 14 clinics within the San Francisco Health Network (SFHN). She has expertise in investigating barriers that historically excluded populations face to using digital health tools and the implementation science and clinical expertise about how to spread workflows within under-resourced primary care settings.
Dr. Khoong is interested in leveraging technology and implementation science to improve equity in delivery of primary care. Her research aims to reduce chronic disease disparities in historically excluded populations. Dr. Khoong's research interests are driven by her experiences as a primary care clinician caring for diverse patients within a safety-net setting. Dr. Khoong and Dr. Sarkar have a long-standing track record of collaboration and have co-authored more than 25 publications together.
Funding
Dr. Khoong is supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the National Institutes of Health, and by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.