Year 4. December 15. Our Community Impact: Covering Many Bases
An essential pillar of the department of medicine’s strategic plan is community engagement and investment. Specifically, as members of a public university, we are committed to advancing health and improving outcomes for our diverse communities. Additionally, underlying themes that characterize our strategic goals are collaboration and partnership. This week, I chose to share stories that exemplify many of our meaningful contributions that have directly impacted the greater LA community and beyond.
Drug Checking L.A. Honored Program by L.A. County Public Health Department
I am proud to share that Drug Checking Los Angeles — a program founded by UCLA Department of Medicine (DoM) epidemiologist Chelsea L. Shover, PhD, an associate professor-in-residence in the UCLA Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research (GIMHSR) and an affiliate of the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention and Treatment Services (CHIPTS) — recently received the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s (LACDPH) 2025 Community Partner Values Awards Winner for Quality. The award recognizes LACDPH community partners who exemplify its mission to improve the health of Angelenos.
“I felt honored to have my team's efforts recognized this way,” Dr. Shover said. “I'm proud to have built a program that is producing rigorous science in close partnership with people most affected by the issues we're trying to improve.”
Drug Checking L.A. is a harm reduction program that prevents overdose deaths through free testing of cocaine, ketamine and other drugs for the presence of substances like fentanyl. The organization uses test strips and fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy to get instant results; they work with a partner laboratory to provide more specific testing of complex samples.
Besides preventing overdose deaths, the program also serves as a tool to surveil the local illicit drug supply and the demographics of those who use drugs, which inform abuse prevention and treatment efforts. The fact that the LACDPH saw Drug Checking Los Angeles as worthy of an award suggests they see great merit in community-based drug testing.
“In a domestic political climate increasingly hostile to people who use drugs, and harm reduction as a concept, this recognition feels especially important,” Dr. Shover said.
The program supports research conducted in Dr. Shover’s lab, which investigates substance abuse harm reduction strategies and ways to make overdose data quickly available so it can be used for public health policy. The lab’s work has been published in several high-profile journals and presented at major conferences.
Perhaps the most critical element of Dr. Shover's research are the perspectives of drug users themselves. As a former journalist, she is fascinated by other people’s stories — and sees them as critical to her work in science, harm reduction and public health.
"I am committed to advancing research in areas that are often overlooked or misunderstood due to stigma. I aim to bring more people into the scientific production process — especially people who have been outsiders in terms of building medical evidence. Those first-hand perspectives improve the types of questions we ask and the approaches we take,” Dr. Shover said. “We've been able to do that in Drug Checking Los Angeles. We're taking the health of fentanyl users seriously, and we're getting published in top scientific journals and giving talks around the world.”
Drug Checking L.A. has ambitions to spread its mission outside of Southern California. The organization is in the process establishing partnerships in a few other countries to understand unique drug supply phenomena.
“Los Angeles is a fascinating place to study drugs, and we learn things that I hope can help improve health for people far beyond,” Dr. Shover said. “And I think we're innovating in terms of creative ways get people involved in the scientific process.”
Congratulations to Drug Checking L.A. and Dr. Shover on your much-deserved award — and thank you for your dedication to this important work.
13th Annual UCLA Diabetes Symposium Brings Together Bright Minds in Diabetes Care
Every autumn for the past 13 years, endocrinologists and other health care providers from all over the region have come together at UCLA for the UCLA Diabetes Symposium, where they discuss new developments in diabetes treatment and prevention. This year’s meeting, held Nov. 13 at the Regent Santa Monica Beach Hotel, was a testament to just how important the event has become — more than 250 clinicians, allied health professionals and researchers braved torrential rain to learn from one another.
“Despite challenging weather conditions, the symposium saw strong attendance, reflecting the heightened interest in recent advancements in diabetes research and treatment,” Dianne S. Cheung, MD, MPH, FACE, ECNU, co-chair of the UCLA Diabetes Symposium, said. The day’s most prevalent theme was cardiometabolic health, along with management of other diabetes co-morbidities, mechanisms of new diabetes drugs on the market and the ability of continuous glucose monitors to predict diabetes complications.
“We had a strong group of dynamic speakers and active audience participation,” Matthew J. Freeby, MD, director of the Gonda Diabetes Center and symposium course director said. “Given initial feedback, I think we provided timely topics practical for the clinician.”
More than half the speakers were UCLA faculty, with most of them from the DoM. Dr. Cheung and Dr. Freeby were among them: Dr. Cheung’s presentation focused on case studies illustrating the clinical benefits of GLP-1 receptor agonists, particularly in addressing common co-morbidities associated with diabetes, while Dr. Freeby spoke on new diabetes treatments beyond GLP-1 receptor agonists. UCLA endocrinologist Hugo A. Torres, Jr, MD, MPH talked about diabetes care in high-risk populations; Tannaz Moin, MD, MBA, MSHS, an endocrinologist who is based at UCLA and the VA, gave a presentation on prediabetes. I spoke about the relationship between diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Other speakers came in from around the country — Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Columbia University in New York City, the Grunberger Diabetes Institute in Michigan and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center here in L.A. were represented among the line up.
All of our session moderators were endocrinologists in the DoM — Dina S. Kamel, MD; Kyrstin L. Lane, MD; Sophie M. Cannon, MD and Robert L. Li, MD, PhD all donated their time to the event.
For Dr. Freeby, the most rewarding part of the day was getting to catch up with colleagues, speakers and attendees. He is grateful to everyone who helped make the day a success, including his co-leader, Dr. Cheung.
“One of our goals is to provide meaningful diabetes care content that can be used in clinical practice,” he said. “I believe our speakers did an excellent job teaching all this year!”
Thank you to Dr. Cheung, Dr. Freeby, our speakers and session moderators and the many enthusiastic attendees for another fantastic UCLA Diabetes Symposium! I am already looking forward to next year.
While we are on the subject of diabetes conferences, I would also like to give a shout-out to the UCLA faculty and fellows who attended the Clinical Association of California Endocrinologists (CACE) 2025 Endocrine Summit in Anaheim back in September. We are always well-represented among the attendees at this conference, as well as among CACE leadership. Dr. Lane serves as treasurer of CACE; Dr. Cheung is immediate past president. PGY-5 endocrinology fellow Katayoun Khoshbin, MD is the CACE fellow-in-training. Several of our faculty gave presentations at this meeting as well.
I continue to be impressed by the excellent work of my colleagues in endocrinology. I am proud to a be a member of the endocrinology tribe, at UCLA!
Community Impact by Our Nephrology Faculty Across Greater Los Angeles
One of the key objectives under the community engagement and investment pillar of the UCLA DoM Strategic Plan is to promote healthier, thriving neighborhoods through health education and disease prevention. I would like to highlight two specific programs based in the Division of Nephrology whose recent activities exemplify our commitment to our community.
The first is the Kidney Disease Screening and Awareness Program (KDSAP), a UCLA undergrad student-run chronic kidney disease (CKD) screening program. Over the past year, the group has held free kidney health screenings in various locations around the region, including the Holman United Methodist Church, the Westchester Family YMCA, Gahr High School, the Long Beach Convention Center and the Westwood Public Library.
Recent graduate Mia Orr served as president of the organization. She noted that she joined KDSAP because she resonated deeply with its mission.
“I wanted to work with communities to make a tangible impact and address healthcare disparities in a way that is accessible to those who need it most. When I joined, I didn't know much about kidneys or CKD, like many people, but I was eager to learn more and use what I learned to help educate others through our screenings and community outreach,” Mia said. “In my experience with KDSAP so far, working with our incredible team to plan screenings from start to finish, and making connections with members of the community, have been some of the most meaningful and rewarding aspects. I hope to grow KDSAP’s impact in the upcoming year and create more opportunities for students to develop their passion for service and kidneys!"
UCLA student Manogna Jha, who also serves as an undergraduate researcher in the laboratory of Tara TeSlaa, PhD in the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology in addition to being a member of KDSAP, noted that she wanted to aid the community in any way that she can. Kidney health is important to her, as many members of her family and her home community in Fresno have CKD. Not many people know about it, however, so she wants to promote awareness through KDSAP.
When Natalie Bachman, a first-year student on the pre-health track at UCLA who serves as the screening director of KDSAP, was looking for clubs to join, she was attracted by the organization’s rapid growth.
“I knew I wanted to be part of their community outreach initiatives,” Natalie said. “During my time here, I feel as though I've greatly developed my communicative skills with participants, something I hope to carry into my future endeavors."
Let me thank nephrology division faculty members James M. Wilson, MD; Mohammed Kamgar, MD; and Susanne B. Nicholas, MD, MPH, PhD for their leadership in this endeavor. Enjoy pictures from KDSAP programs this past year and read more about the organization HERE.
Second, the UCLA CORE Kidney Program recently held the inaugural 2025 CORE Kidney Patient-Health Care Provider (HCP) Summit, on Nov. 1 in Westwood. Thirty physicians and other kidney care providers from UCLA, the University of Southern California, the University of California Irvine and Loma Linda University joined more than 200 patients, their families, kidney donors, caregivers and industry partners for a series of expert panels on a wide range of topics that affect patients with kidney disease.
“The idea was to bring all the key stakeholders together in one place,” Anjay Rastogi, MD, PhD, director of the UCLA CORE Kidney Program, said. “There was a lot of education, but it was more than that — it was an interaction between patients and health care providers, so patients could hear what matters to us and we can hear what is important to them.”
The event started with welcome remarks from Johnese Spisso, MPA president of UCLA Health and CEO of the UCLA Hospital System. After Dr. Rastogi gave an overview of the UCLA CORE Kidney Program, physicians and health care providers from UCLA Health and other local health systems led breakout sessions on cardio-kidney metabolic health, diabetes, genetics, immunology, advanced kidney disease care and patient empowerment. There was a special focus on transplantation — specifically pre-emptive transplantation — in patients with advanced kidney disease.
“Our focus is on patient empowerment, so the patient can advocate for the best care they can get and work as a team with their health care providers,” Dr. Rastogi said.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, CORE Kidney engaged with patients every March in honor of Kidney Month at a health fair held on Santa Monica Beach. While the event drew large crowds, Dr. Rastogi and the CORE Kidney team wanted more interactive programs that facilitate patient-provider conversations — and, in doing so, potentially shift medicine from reactive to proactive care.
Attendees appreciated the approach. The summit received enthusiastic feedback from caregivers and patients alike, many of whom felt that it brought a sense of community around chronic kidney disease. They were particularly engaged in conversations about how physicians and health professionals view those in their care and noted that they prefer a “person-centric” philosophy over a “patient-centric” one.
“It’s about the person behind the patient,” Dr. Rastogi said. “They’re human beings, and they want us to look at that person.”
Dr. Rastogi thanked the many volunteers who helped make the event a success, including CORE Kidney patient ambassadors and the UCLA Bruin Beans Health Club, a selective organization of undergraduates and recent alumni who work with CORE Kidney to promote kidney health.
Please join me in congratulating the CORE Kidney team on a very successful event!
UCLA Scleroderma Center Honored at Scleroderma Foundation of Southern California Key to a Cure Gala
The UCLA Scleroderma Center is one of the largest referral centers in the world for patients with scleroderma, a rare autoimmune condition that causes scarring and fibrosis in the skin and internal organs. In a testament to the excellence of the rheumatologists and other specialists who make the center so widely sought out, the center was awarded the Helen Greenberg Memorial Spirit of Leadership Award by the Scleroderma Foundation of Southern California during its 24thAnnual Key to a Cure Gala, held Oct. 18 in Marina Del Rey.
“It was a wonderful evening spent with colleagues and patients alike celebrating the scleroderma foundation of California and the UCLA Scleroderma Center’s contributions to the foundation’s mission,” Arissa Young, MD, a rheumatologist who cares for patients at the center, said.
The gala raises funds for patient education and support services for patients with scleroderma and their families. Gala organizers honored the UCLA Scleroderma Center with the Helen Greenberg Memorial Spirit of Leadership Award for its “exceptional, multi-disciplinary care and commitment to advancing treatment and hope for scleroderma patients.” The award was accepted on behalf of the center by Suzanne Kafaja, MD, who directs Scleroderma Clinical Trials Programs at UCLA.
Congratulations to the faculty and staff of the UCLA Scleroderma Center! I am grateful to your dedication to improving the quality of life of our patients.
Nephrology Rockstars Break Participation Records at 2025 Kidney Week
Our department’s strong showing at conferences this year continued last month in Houston at the American Society for Nephrology’s (ASN) 2025 Kidney Week. More than a dozen faculty and fellows shared their research in posters and talks, including some honorary lectures given by senior faculty.
While the division of nephrology has a long history of participating in kidney week, 2025 was a banner year.
“This year was special!” Susanne B. Nicholas, MD, MPH, PhD, interim academic chief of the division of nephrology, said. “I was very proud to see the record turnout of both faculty and fellows from our combined program with up to 14 high-impact oral, poster and late-breaking presentations, as well as our senior faculty participation as distinguished speakers and moderators of several sessions, providing increased visibility and opportunities to showcase our science and innovation.”
Fellows who presented research and clinical cases at the conference included Lemar A. Gardezi, MD; Simran Kaur, MD; Michael B. Neinast, DO; and Jose L. Rayas, Jr., MD. Faculty members Farid Arman, MD; Lama M. Abdelnour, MD; and Sina Emami, MD all presented as well. Poster co-authors from other divisions highlighted our interdisciplinary collaborations with colleagues at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, including Connie M. Rhee, MD, MSc; Sean Lei, MD; Shilpa Sharma, MD; Yoko Narasaki; and Kamyar Kalantar-Zadeh, MD, MPH, PhD; the UCLA Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research, including Keith C. Norris, MD, PhD and O. Kenrik Duru, MD; and the UCLA CTSI, including Leonid Shpaner, PhD and Panayiotis Petousis, PhD and Jonathan Zuckerman, MD in UCLA department of Pathology.
Dr. Nicholas presented a poster on behalf of her UCLA Center for the Center for Kidney Disease Research, Education, and Hope (CURE)-CKD Registry team. She also gave the 20th Annual Nancy E. Gary Memorial Lecture, titled “Advancing Opportunities for Women in Nephrology: From Insight to Impact.” The lecture was co-sponsored by the ASN and Women In Nephrology (WIN), an advocacy and mentorship support group of which Dr. Nicholas is the immediate past president. She spoke about WIN’s history in a separate lecture titled “History of WIN and Vision for the Future,” and additionally gave a talk titled “Saving Kidneys, Hearts, and Lives: Understanding the Landscape of Pharmacotherapies.” Dr. Nicholas also served as a moderator for a session called “CKM Interactions and More: Multi-Morbidity and the Era of Integrated Care.”
Other major faculty presentations included one titled “Genetic Testing in the Transplant Clinic” by Gabriel M. Danovitch, MD, who led the UCLA Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Program for 40 years until he retired in 2023. Dr. Rhee, who serves as section chief of nephrology at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System spoke on “Use of GLP-1 Receptor Agonists in Patients on Dialysis and in Kidney Transplant Recipients” and was a panel discussant on “Case Studies in Diabetes Management.”
Other faculty who attended the conference included UCLA Division of Nephrology Clinical Chief Anjay Rastogi, MD, PhD; UCLA Nephrology Fellowship Program Director Mohammad Kamgar, MD; Niloofar Nobakht, MD; Michelle R. Hwang, MD; Ramon Angel Durazo, MD and Suphamai Bunnapradist, MD, MS. They enjoyed catching up with former UCLA nephrology fellows Ruth Wintz, MD, FASN, who is now a physician at Kidney Associates in Houston, and Aws Aljanabi, MD, a clinician at Cleveland East Vascular Care.
Dr. Nicholas was happy to see faculty, current fellows and former fellows forming new connections that could further their careers. She hopes that the division can play an active role in facilitating them at the future Kidney Weeks.
“I hope that next year we will be able to sponsor a dedicated event at Kidney Week to further promote the type of camaraderie amongst that will fuel collaborations and networking,” Dr. Nicholas said. She added that she has returned from past Kidney Weeks with enhanced inspiration.
“I hope that our faculty and fellows similarly returned with renewed energy, inner sparks, and perspective of their potential impact with opportunities to belong to something even larger than they could have imagined,” she said. “I know that it gave our senior faculty members great pride to have contributed to the tangible successes of their mentees to move the field forward.”
A full list of abstracts that included our faculty and fellows can be found on this page. Congratulations to all!
Dennis Slamon, MD Elected to National Academy of Inventors
I am happy to announce that Dennis J. Slamon, MD, PhD, chief of the UCLA Division of Hematology-Oncology, was recently elected as a National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Fellow. This honor recognizes Dr. Slamon’s immense scientific achievements and his contributions to the field of oncology, which changed significantly after his invention of the breast cancer drug Herceptin in the 1990s.
"I am deeply honored and humbled to be elected to this academy as a physician scientist as opposed to an engineer or physicist,” Dr. Slamon said. “It gives credence to the concept that identifying novel targets and validating them as new therapies for cancer treatment is an inventive process.”
Herceptin was revolutionary because it was one of the first cancer drugs to target a specific gene alteration, in this case on the gene Her2. Dr. Slamon was instrumental in taking basic research on Herceptin’s mechanism of action and turning it into a drug that has saved the lives of millions of women.
Dr. Slamon feels that his election to the NAI is a good sign for early-career physician-scientists in oncology.
"I think that should be a signal to other colleagues and new investigators coming into the field that this is a very rich area for innovative thinking and research,” he said.
Dr. Slamon will be inducted into the NAI during its 15th annual conference, which will be held here in L.A. early next June. Please join me in congratulating him on this phenomenal honor!
I hope that you will be inspired by the amazing impact of our faculty in our communities and the world.
Supporting Our Colleagues Following Recent Tragic Events
I am sure that many of you have heard the troubling news regarding mass shootings that took place this weekend, including incidents at Brown University and in Sydney, Australia, where the tragedy occurred during a celebration marking the start of Hannukah. At a time of year when many join with family and friends to celebrate the holidays, I know that these events have hit many of our colleagues hard. Beyond the shock and heartbreak, events like these can create fear and uncertainty. During these difficult times, I encourage all of us to pause, check in and share a thought or a hug with our colleagues who are processing the impact of recent events. The DoM is at its best when we support each other during difficult times.
Dale
P.S.
My wife and I were in downtown LA last night at a music event. She thought it would be good to share this picture taken last night at the Civic Center Mark and Gloria Molina Grand Park.
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