Year 5. May 26. The Continuum of Innovation
This week, I focus on members of the UCLA Department of Medicine (DoM) who are using rigorous methods to understand human disease and the shortcomings of our health care systems with the goal of improving human health. Participants in this important endeavor run the gamut from trainees across the residency programs affiliated with our department to early stage and senior faculty. The beauty of these endeavors is their commonality. As physicians and scientists, we are doers, implementors and ultimately healers. I encourage you to learn more about the diversity of these endeavors that underpin our commitment to Lead in Innovation, Transform Care and Advance Health for All.
Solomon Scholars Research Day Showcases Rockstar Resident Scientists
Last Monday I was fortunate to have the chance to attend the 41st annual Solomon Scholars Research Day. Established in 1981 in honor of David H. Solomon, MD, DoM chair from 1971 to 1981, this event showcases the exceptional scholarly work of internal medicine trainees within UCLA-affiliated internal medicine programs.
“Performing scholarly work during residency is truly extraordinary,” Risa M. Hoffman, MD, MPH, who co-leads the research pathway within the UCLA Internal Medicine Residency Program and moderated the event, said. “I know this work did not happen easily, and I hope that it is the beginning of these researchers’ lifelong commitment to inquiry in whatever form that may take throughout their careers.”
The event included a series of oral presentations and a poster session. Here are a few highlights from our speakers.
Asraful Hoque, MD | Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
Why is cardiovascular disease the most common cause of mortality among firefighters? This question was at the heart of Dr. Hoque’s presentation at Solomon Scholars Research Day, where he presented evidence that male L.A. firefighters have higher levels of atherosclerotic plaque — including higher levels of more unstable, and therefore more dangerous, non-calcified plaque — than non-firefighter matched controls.
This was reflected in several metrics, such as the firefighters’ relative coronary artery calcium (CAC) scores. The firefighter cohort had higher percentage of subjects with a CAC score between one and 399, representing a mild to moderate burden of disease, while the control group had a higher percentage of subjects who had either a control score of zero — meaning no disease — or a CAC score of 400 or greater, representing a severe burden of disease, suggesting that even if the firefighters were not overrepresented among those with the highest CAC scores, more of them overall had elevated calcium levels in their arteries.
Dr. Hoque and his team also found that the firefighters had worse coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) scores compared to controls, with greater median total stenosis and total plaque volume. When they examined the individual types of plaque, the researchers found that although the firefighter cohort had higher levels of non-calcified plaque; when adjusted for vessel size, they had higher overall plaque burden compared to the controls. However, stenosis burden greater than 50% was insignificant between the two groups.
Longitudinal results provided insight into progression of disease and the impact of preventive intervention. Sixty-two of the firefighters returned for follow-up CCTAs the following year; among those who did not receive intervention for their plaque burden, firefighters had a higher annualized change in total plaque volumes and calcified plaque volumes. This suggests both an elevated plaque burden and a faster progression of coronary plaque in firefighters.
“Firefighting is a very stressful profession, and firefighters are exposed to high volumes of smoke and particulate matter which may contribute to their high prevalence of cardiovascular disease and the elevated plaque burden we identified in this study,” Dr. Hoque said. Future work will focus on longitudinal assessments of plaque regression and the impact of occupational exposures, along with studies to refine risk assessment and guide prevention strategies.
Dr. Hoque felt it was important for him to conduct research as a resident to contribute to the scholarly work that has moved medicine forward. He plans to matriculate into a cardiology fellowship and, following the L.A. fires, felt that it was important to investigate why firefighters are at higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease. He expressed gratitude to Harbor-UCLA cardiologist Sion Roy, MD for his mentorship.
“It was an honor to be able to present my work at Solomon Scholars,” Dr. Hoque said.
Mitchell Flagg, MD | Kaiser-Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center
Roughly half of all people with acute heart failure are iron deficient, a problem that a growing body of literature suggests can lead to hospital readmissions, reduced exercise tolerance and poorer outcomes. Yet while iron deficiency screenings are recommended in recent guidelines for patients who have acute heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, this practice is not yet ubiquitous — and real-world data on screenings are somewhat limited, particularly in the U.S.
“It’s becoming increasingly part of the standard of care, but it’s not necessarily widely recognized,” said third-year Kaiser-Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center resident Mitchell Flagg, MD. At Solomon Scholars, Dr. Flagg presented the results of a study aimed at creating a clearer picture of trends in the adoption of these guidelines. He and his team analyzed data on iron screenings in nearly 30,000 patients within the Kaiser Permanente health care system who had acute heart failure with reduced ejection fraction. They found that over the study period, between 2016 and 2024, only about 20% of patients were screened — and only a fraction of those who had iron deficiency were treated. This was on par with rates seen in other studies involving other health system registries.
Dr. Flagg and his team also examined the type of iron deficiency treatment patients received. Studies demonstrating benefits of treatment typically look at the use of adult formulations of intravenous iron supplementation, as opposed to oral doses.
“Many of these patients end up receiving treatment with only oral iron and a widely varying set of formulations,” Dr. Flagg explained. Additionally, they found that among individuals with heart failure, potential other causes of iron deficiency were often included in their diagnoses. These patients were frequently documented as having anemia or some degree of renal compromise, even though the team screened out those who were frail, or had chronic or end-stage kidney disease.
“This suggests that iron deficiencies might be identified incidentally in patients with acute heart failure, though we would have to do some further work to confirm that to be the case,” Dr. Flagg said.
Dr. Flagg has technically been conducting research here at UCLA since high school, when he was part of a public health lab. He has prioritized research at every step of his career since, from college to residency.
“There’s just such a large patient population within Kaiser-Permanente and such a wealth of available data, and research has been part of my own learning process as I’ve been progressing through training,” he said. “It’s really helped me to get a better sense of the practical applications of a lot of the theory that we learn along the way, and of population-level manifestations of these things that we learn about.”
Dr. Flagg added that research has also helped him build connections with his mentors. He feels very grateful to have their support, including that of Kaiser hospital medicine physician Cheng-Wei Huang, MD.
“Research has made it possible for me to understand the importance of what we do on a bigger scale,” Dr. Flagg said.
Matthew Palmbach, DO | Kern Medical Hospital
Daily weight tracking is a critical part of caring for patients with chronic kidney disease and heart failure, as it helps monitor their fluid retention status. After learning that daily weights often were not being obtained for these patients at one of the community health center sites where he is a resident, Matthew Palmbach, DO and a team launched a quality improvement project to investigate and ameliorate the problem.
“We were finding that it just wasn’t getting done in our hospital, unfortunately,” Dr. Palmbach said. He and his team reviewed documentation from 150 patient stays and discovered that some of the orders the physicians had placed for weight measurements automatically expired after 24 hours.
“Thus, the care team wasn’t getting the orders at all — it was as if they didn’t exist,” he said. In addition to fixing this issue on the technical side, he and others on the QI team worked with all staff across the care center to determine and streamline the workflow for obtaining daily weights.
Dr. Palmbach feels that research during residency — and throughout one’s career — is essential to staying on top of new developments in the field.
“Medicine is always changing. You’re always going to find something new,” he said. “If you’re not curious, you kind of get stuck in the knowledge you had back in medical school or during residency, so I think research is a way to keep yourself refreshed and moving forward.”
Dr. Palmbach expressed his gratitude for all of his mentors, particularly Marah Sukkar, MD, who led the project and serves as the site director for the UCLA internal medicine clerkship at Kern Medical.
“She has been a constant support to me and has always pushed me to make sure I get this project done on time,” he said. He also thanked the rest of the QI team and Kern Medical nephrologist Sabitha Eppanapally, MD and cardiologist Fowrooz Joolhar, MD, FACC, who have supported the work.
“It’s great to finally find something that cardiologists and nephrologists agree on,” Dr. Palmbach joked.
Christina Sisliyan, DO | Olive View-UCLA Medical Center
Younger patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) are often prescribed medications called JAK inhibitors to keep symptoms at bay, but health care providers may be hesitant to give these drugs to older patients out of concern for serious side effects. Instead, they are exposed to long-term corticosteroids, which is not ideal for managing IBD as chronic steroid use carries its own adverse events.
To understand the real risks of prescribing JAK inhibitors, second-year Olive View-UCLA Medical Center resident Christina Sisliyan, DO and her team conducted a wide-ranging literature review of studies on the topic. On the therapeutic side, they focused on remission rates, clinical remission rates and endoscopic improvement. With regards to safety, they looked at rates colectomy, thromboembolism, non-melanomatous skin cancer, overall malignancy, herpes zoster infection, and any adverse events. For this study, older patients were defined as those over the age of 50.
Interestingly, Dr. Sisliyan’s team found that JAK inhibitors had similar effectiveness and largely similar safety profile. Rates of malignancy, colectomy and venous thrombosis were similar between the two cohorts, and while overall rates of adverse effects were higher in older adults, the team could not determine the severity of the events from the review. They did find that older adults who took JAK inhibitors had more frequent instances of herpes zoster infections.
“Looking at the grand scheme of things, when you're considering a risk-benefit analysis, there are available vaccinations against herpes zoster which may help mitigate some of those risks,” Dr. Sisliyan said.
Dr. Sisliyan’s project is part of a wider effort to improve care for older adults with IBD, as they’re an oft-neglected population in IBD care. She and her team — which includes her mentor Berkeley N. Limketkai, MD, PhD — hope to advance more guideline-directed therapies for caring for older adults with these conditions. She also hopes to continue research projects like this one as an aspiring gastroenterology fellow.
“I think part of what you see in GI fellowship is that care changes virtually every day, and those changes come from the research that comes forth,” Dr. Sisliyan said. “As I’ve seen from my project, research has the potential to change clinical practice.”
Ghadi Ghanem, MD | UCLA
Multiple studies have shown that hospitalist-led procedure teams can reduce wait times for inpatient procedures and decrease the total length of stay for those who are admitted to the hospital. This service is still new across the country and is a departure from traditional workflows. There is currently little empiric evidence to inform decisions regarding which procedures could be safely performed by these teams, versus others such as interventional radiologists.
One patient population with particularly long inpatient stays are those being actively treated for cancer. Here at UCLA, highly adept hospitalist-led procedure teams have begun giving qualified patients intrathecal chemotherapy at the bedside, a relatively rare procedure for such a team to conduct. To help share this program with others, second-year internal medicine resident Ghadi Ghanem, MD, his mentor Alexandra M. Glaeser, MD, and their team analyzed the time to procedure, complications and outcomes for 564 total intrathecal chemotherapy procedures on 228 unique patients. Their main results showed that patients for whom the procedure team conducted the procedure, waited only six hours, about four times faster than the 24 hours they would have waited for interventional radiology access. Importantly, they had equivalently low rates of complications.
“This work showed that we can decrease their length of stay, so it really has a lot of benefit to the patients that we serve on a daily basis in the hospital,” Dr. Ghanem said.
Dr. Ghanem credits the UCLA Internal Medicine Residency Program for reinforcing his longstanding commitment towards research. The program's mentors, resources and access to statisticians keep residents at the cutting-edge of medical scholarship and gives them a chance to contribute to the evolution of patient care. He is especially grateful to Dr. Glaeser and and Gary S. Feigenbaum, MD, who proposed the study, helped Dr. Ghanem draft manuscripts and posters, and offered critical support.
“I picture myself as being in academics long term, and so being able to do research and work with learners is something that I foresee myself doing in the future,” Dr. Ghanem said. “Having this experience here at UCLA to set that foundation has been instrumental towards achieving that future.”
Nicholas Ligouri, MD | Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
There is extensive evidence that patients who pay for their care with Medicaid or government-subsidized insurance have overall worse health outcomes than their privately insured peers. As second-year Cedars-Sinai Medical Center resident Nicholas Liguori, MD shared during his Solomon Scholars presentation, the disparities remain in the case of cardiogenic shock outcomes as well — even in a large health care system with procedures in place to mitigate socioeconomic differences.
“I think it's always important as a resident to conduct research to try to advance the field, and to continue to look at marginalized groups,” Dr. Ligouri said. “Our Medicaid patients are some of the most vulnerable patients in L.A., and it's important to represent them in studies, particularly in large retrospective studies like we did at our center.”
To come to their conclusions, Dr. Liguori and a team of researchers conducted a retrospective, single-center study of 2,336 patients with cardiogenic shock who were treated at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The disparities were most apparent in the Medicaid population: The patients on Medicaid had a higher 90-day mortality rate than those on private insurance and were also less likely to receive advanced forms of care. Interestingly, for patients with Medicare, mortality rates were lower than for patients with private insurance, which Dr. Liguori suggested might be linked to potential residual confounding patient differences in addition to a strong emphasis around goals for care of Medicare patients in the hospital system.
“We were able to see that structural and financial inequities exist both upstream from when these patients get to our doors and downstream in their eligibility for advanced therapies, leading to worse outcomes, even in the short term,” Dr. Liguori said. “Continuing to build a dialogue and publish data around health outcomes in the Medicaid population, particularly in cardiogenic shock, strengthens the voices of those who are fighting at a policy-level for systematic change.”
Dr. Liguori said that he hopes to grow to be just like his mentors, Cedars-Sinai cardiologists Meshe D. Chonde, MD and Donald D. Richards, MD.
“They’re wonderful clinicians, and they’re even better men,” he said. “They are humble people with great integrity and a sense of serving the patient, no matter where they come from or what they’ve gone through.”
Dr. Liguori will be a chief resident at Cedars in 2027 and plans to continue this research when he moves on to a cardiology fellowship.
“We are a major center nationally for heart transplants, and I want to continue expanding access to transplants and high intensity shock care to patients from vulnerable groups,” he said.
R01 Report
A Research Project (R01) grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provides the fuel that enables our scientists to effectively advance their life saving research. As you know, we remain in a challenging federal research funding environment. As discussed often by us in the recent past, many grants that previously would have been approved for funding in a timely manner, are having their funding delayed or not being granted at all. Although this continues to put a strain on our ability to sustain our unflinching commitment to advancing research, we do celebrate victories when we see them. As such, I am encouraged when I learn about our colleagues who have succeeded compete for and receive their well-deserved funding, and to celebrate with them. This week I am pleased to highlight a few of the several R01 grants that our faculty received during the last two fiscal quarters.
DoM Faculty Receive Funding to Study Muscle Aging After Cancer, Infections After Immunosuppression in Kidney Transplant Patients and More
Joanna M. Schaenman, MD, PhD Dives into the Molecular Mechanism of Immunosuppression and Opportunistic Infections in Kidney Transplant Patients
Organ transplant remains the best option for patients with late-stage kidney disease who require renal replacement therapy, but the immunosuppressive medications required to avoid transplant rejection also exposes them to life-threatening infections. With her new R01 from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), transplant infectious diseases specialist and researcher Joanna M. Schaenman, MD, PhD will study the molecular mechanisms that lead to this vulnerability, with the hope of eventually designing individualized strategies for immunosuppression in transplant patients that replace the current one-size-fits-all approach.
“This type of mechanistic and translational research takes advantage of unique resources at UCLA, where we have high level research cores such as the UCLA Technology Center for Genomics & Bioinformatics that foster scientific collaborative opportunities combined with a high-volume solid organ transplant program with sufficient numbers of patients to allow for a single center study,” Dr. Schaenman said. “This is therefore the perfect environment for physician scientists like me, where my clinical work in Transplant Infectious Diseases can inform research questions and clinical care of our increasingly complex patient population at UCLA.”
Dr. Schaenman’s team will use single-cell multi-omics to analyze the characteristics of CD4 and CD8 T cells — key types of cells that are involved in the immune response to pathogens — to evaluate the impact of immunosuppressive drugs. They will leverage UCLA’s high-volume, world-class kidney transplant program to assess the clinical impact of their findings, by studying biobanked specimens from pre- and post-transplant patients for whom there are outcomes data. The study will analyze the correlation between molecular changes measured at the single cell level and cytokine secretion from T cells in response to infectious antigens, with each patient's repertoire and composition of T cell receptors, to predict vulnerability to infection.
“If we could define mechanisms of induction and maintenance immunosuppression on the epigenetic and transcriptional regulation of T cell function, we could use this insight to individualize immunosuppression regimens to avoid over- and under-immunosuppression after transplantation,” she explained.
She feels that the interdisciplinary partnerships across departments at UCLA make it uniquely possible to conduct robust studies like the ones she will undertake with her new R01. Her collaborators include Elaine F. Reed, PhD, director of the UCLA Immunogenetics Center; Matteo Pellegrini, PhD, professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology and human genetics; Suphamai Bunnapradist, MD, MS, professor of medicine and transplant nephrologist in the nephrology division; and David Elashoff, PhD, director of the UCLA Department of Medicine Statistics Core.
Dr. Schaenman is grateful for the support of her mentors and other LEADERS in the infectious diseases division who supported her along her journey to obtain this R01, including through prior unsuccessful applications.
“I have been gratified to see that persistence paid off in this case,” she said. “My division leadership were supportive of my efforts and encouraged me to pursue resources to help with grant writing that was an important part of my eventual success.”
Mina S. Sedrak, MD, MS to Explore Link Between Cancer and Muscle Aging
Cancer treatment undoubtedly extends lives, but survivors — particularly older ones — are often left with a diminished quality of life on account of declines in strength, endurance, mobility and overall independence. Yet despite persistent evidence of this in the clinic, the underlying biological mechanisms are not yet clear.
Oncologist Mina S. Sedrak, MD, MS and geriatrician Jonathan Wanagat, MD, PhD will seek to understand this phenomenon on an R01-funded ancillary study within Prevention of Frailty With Fisetin and Exercise in Breast Cancer Survivors (PROFFi), a Phase II clinical trial that studies the potential of the drug fisetin to target senescent cells, dysfunction of which, prevents muscle regeneration to influence skeletal muscle health and physical performance. In the ancillary study, Dr. Sedrak and his team will connect clinical measures of physical function with molecular analyses of skeletal muscle tissue and blood-based biomarkers.
“By doing so, we hope we can better understand why some individuals remain resilient while others experience accelerated functional decline,” Dr. Sedrak said. “Ultimately, the long-term goal is to identify biological pathways that can be targeted to improve recovery, preserve independence and enhance quality of life for older adults living with and beyond cancer.”
Participants in the study will undergo detailed assessments of physical function, body composition, mobility, strength, frailty, fatigue and patient-reported outcomes. The team will also analyze blood samples and skeletal biopsies to study molecular pathways involved in aging biology, mitochondrial function, inflammation and cell senescence.
One of the project’s key strengths is the integration of translational geriatric science or geroscience methods, with a clinical trial infrastructure. The team will use advanced molecular approaches to study skeletal muscle biology, including analyses of mitochondrial DNA and cellular stress pathways, while also studying how these biological signals relate to real-world functional outcomes in patients.
“This type of deeply integrated translational work is still relatively uncommon in cancer survivorship research and provides an opportunity to bridge mechanistic biology with clinically meaningful patient outcomes,” Dr. Wanagat said.
Dr. Sedrak noted that the project reflects his team’s long-term goal of advancing translational geroscience, which seeks to connect discoveries in the biology of aging with interventions that improve health and functional outcomes in older adults. The mission aligns closely with that of the newly established Los Angeles Older Americans Independence Center, which is led by Dr. Wanagat, as one of the principal investigators. The center was created to accelerate interdisciplinary translational aging research across UCLA, Cedars-Sinai and USC, with an emphasis on improving physical function, resilience and independence in older adults.
Dr. Wanagat added that he believes cancer survivorship represents an important and increasingly recognized model of accelerated aging biology. By studying how aging pathways influence recovery after cancer treatment, he and his team hope to generate insights that are relevant not only to cancer survivors, but also to broader questions about aging, frailty and functional decline.
“In the future, we hope this research will contribute to the development of interventions that not only extend lifespan, but also preserve healthspan, physical independence and quality of life,” he said. “We believe this work represents part of a larger shift in medicine toward understanding not only how long people live after cancer, but how well they live. Preserving physical function, independence and resilience in older adults is becoming an increasingly important priority in cancer care and aging research alike.”
Dr. Wanagat and Dr. Sedrak emphasized that the new, translational research they are conducting requires cooperation across fields — and an environment that supports it.
“This kind of collaborative, interdisciplinary research is only possible at UCLA,” Dr. Sedrak said.
Sae Takada, MD, PhD, MHS Examines Impact of Program to Improve Care and Outcomes for Medically and Socially Complex Patients with Diabetes
From 2016 to 2021, the state of California’s Whole Person Care (WPC) Pilot demonstration project aimed to promote coordination of health, behavioral health and social services for the most complex Medicaid beneficiaries. WPC was implemented in 25 sites across California between 2016 and 2021. Among them was WPC-Los Angeles (WPC-LA), which was administered by the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (LAC-DHS). WPC-LA screened Medicaid beneficiaries with medical, behavioral or social needs and connected them to community-based organizations.
Now that the program has ended, Sae Takada, MD, PhD, MHS will lead the way in assessing its impact on patients with diabetes through an R01 grant to study how enrolled patients fared in terms of diabetes care, complications, emergency department use and hospitalizations. She will partner with the LAC-DHS to do so.
“We hope the findings will help inform current and future programs that address social needs for medically and socially complex patients,” Dr. Takada said.
Dr. Takada described the process to obtain her first R01 as challenging. Support from the Bridge Grant program administered by the DGSOM Office of Physician Scientist Career Development, allowed her to obtain preliminary data which was critical for a strong proposal.
“Finding out that we received an R01 sparked so many feelings — disbelief, gratitude for the study team and mentors who supported me and excitement for starting the project,” she said.
To glean insights about the impact of WPC-LA, Dr. Takada’s team will extract electronic health records and programmatic data from WPC-LA then use a combination of statistical analysis techniques to evaluate whether patients who were enrolled in the program had better outcomes than similar patients who were not. They will also use what are known as interaction models to analyze whether the program had different outcomes for people with intersecting identities of race, ethnicity and gender.
The team’s work will be conducted with the help of a community advisory board of patients, families and care providers whose lived experience will inform analysis and interpretation of findings.
“We believe that when community members with lived experience participate directly in research, we can create more relevant and sustainable solutions to health disparities,” Dr. Takada said.
Dr. Takada’s R01 will illuminate how programs like WPC-LA can help overcome the social barriers that her primary care patients at the VA face such as housing instability and food insecurity that make it difficult for them to engage in care and manage chronic diseases.
“As a researcher, I am interested in understanding whether and how healthcare systems can address these social barriers to improve patients’ health and reduce emergency department visits and hospitalizations,” she said.
Dr. Takada’s team is composed of DoM members with deep expertise across diabetes, community-based participatory research and analysis of electronic health records data. They include Tannaz Moin, MD, MBA, MHS; Carol M. Mangione, MD; Arleen F. Brown, MD, PhD; Stefanie Vassar; David Huang, Dr.P.H.; and Jessica Jara. Dr. Takada is grateful to have an extensive partnership with LAC-DHS through Dr. Brown, as well as for all of the support she has received from her mentors and peers in the DoM.
“I would not have gotten to this point without the amazing support I receive from mentors and peers in the DoM,” she said.
These outstanding faculty represent the overall excellence of the scientific prowess of our department. Your receipt of new R01s in the fourth quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, validate your impact. Congratulations to all!
A Day in the Life: Berkeley N. Limketkai, MD, PhD
From a certain point of view, Berkeley N. Limketkai, MD, PhD has three jobs: He is the director of clinical research in the UCLA Center for Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, a gastroenterologist who applies his clinical research to caring for his patients and a father. Prioritizing faith and family keeps Dr. Limketkai grounded and steady. He begins every day by reading the Bible and praying for his family, friends, patients and anything else that weighs on his mind. This “reset” is critical to facing the many challenges his roles may bring.
“I’ve found that reading the Bible and praying in the morning sets the tone for the day, so I strive to do it 100% of the time,” he said. “It puts me in the spiritual and mental mindset I need to be more patient, compassionate, understanding and gracious.”
Setting his outlook also makes it easy for Dr. Limketkai to stay excited about the parts of his work that he finds most rewarding: translating findings from the lab to improve his patients’ lives. Inflammatory bowel diseases often cause patients’ great suffering, and as a clinical researcher overseeing the discovery of new therapies, he is honored to be able to improve their conditions with what he learns in the lab.
“I find that the bipartite role that I play exceptionally fulfilling,” Dr. Limketkai said. “What I do in a clinical space greatly informs what I do in the research space — the questions patients ask and the gaps in knowledge that we have when deciding what treatments to use for their care becomes fuel for the clinical research questions that we have.”
That pipeline moves from the lab to the clinic as well. Dr. Limketkai loves using clinical data to come up with new and innovative ideas that turn into research projects, the results of which generate new knowledge that can be used in the clinic.
“Some of the approaches we have taken in patient care have directly been impacted by the research that my colleagues, my collaborators and I have done, so I find that there is a lot of synergy between the clinical care and clinical research side,” he explained. “What I find exciting is that while I view clinical care as the application of knowledge, clinical research is the generation of knowledge, and they both kind of go hand in hand. There’s a symbiosis of sorts.”
Ensuring that symbiosis does not come without difficulties. Not the least of them is a high demand on Dr. Limketkai’s time that means he must sacrifice precious hours with his family — a problem that, he noted, is not at all unique to him. Secondly, he added, he lives with a perpetual sensation of juggling pins that could fall down without careful attention.
“There are myriad competing responsibilities,” Dr. Limketkai said. Fortunately, his experience has also brought solutions — one of which is, put simply, to just keep on going.
“What I often tell folks who ask for advice is that sometimes something may feel like Mount Everest, but you’ll never get to the top unless you actually start hiking in that direction,” Dr. Limketkai said. “So what I try to do, especially when faced with daunting tasks or near impossible goals, is to just slowly move in that direction and just chip away at it. Even if I never achieve the goal, I’ve gotten myself closer to where I need to be.”
That mentality has helped him reach deadlines and complete tasks to a great degree of success. So too, has what he describes as a “humbling privilege” to be able to care for patients who are, oftentimes, at their lowest.
“As a clinician, I find it an incredible honor to be entrusted with a patient’s care, and to, in their most vulnerable times, be able to help them walk through this dark tunnel from the depths of despair as we hopefully find the light,” he said. “It is their medical journey, but they have invited us to partake in it.”
Even in a profession where diseases are often chronic, that perseverance pay off.
“Sometimes, when they’re in the midst of all these struggles, it’s hard to see how things are going to get better, and we’ll just see their symptoms improve modestly over time,” Dr. Limketkai said. “But then we get to see them on the other side, and when they’re describing how much better they are now than before, we look back and see how far they’ve traveled through this medical journey, and that’s very rewarding.”
I would like to add that Berkeley has been a tremendous resource to many of our residents and medical students who are interested in conducting research and has availed himself to them as a proactive and devoted mentor.
Healing with the Senses: Advancing Community-Centered Care Through Partnership
The DoM remains deeply committed to expanding community engagement and investment across Los Angeles. A cornerstone of this work is our growing collaboration with federally qualified health centers (FQHC’s), where our faculty provide both primary and specialty care in historically under-resourced communities. This commitment was on full display earlier this month through a meaningful partnership between the Center for East-West Medicine (CEWM) and FQHC Chinatown Service Center (CSC).
On Saturday, May 2, 2026, CEWM and CSC co-hosted Healing with the Senses, a first-of-its-kind community event held in celebration of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month and Mental Health Awareness Month. Building on a partnership established in 2021, CEWM and CSC have developed a strong and impactful collaboration over the past five years, one that continues to bring accessible, culturally informed and cost-effective approaches to wellness in the community.
The event welcomed more than 200 community members who joined DoM faculty, CSC physicians and staff for a day centered on slowing down, reconnecting and exploring evidence-based mind-body practices. Grounded in the six senses, sight, sound, taste, touch, scent and spirit, the program invited participants to engage in hands-on workshops and immersive activities designed to foster emotional well-being and deepen community connection.
Edward K. Hui, MD, clinical chief east-west medicine and clinical professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine and health services research, opened the event by emphasizing its central theme of connection: “mind and body, culture and science, and of course, community.” His remarks reflected the spirit of collaboration between UCLA and CSC and the shared goal of delivering culturally responsive care.
As highlighted by DoM Director of Health Equity Partnerships Daniel Kozman, MD, MPH, addressing mental health is a critical foundation for fostering overall health. He shared that untreated mental health concerns often make it impossible for patients to prioritize all other aspects of health. This contributes to adverse health outcomes and inadequate control of chronic medical conditions if we, as their care team, do not recognize and sensitively partner with patients to address this key aspect of health. While in many communities, stigma can remain a barrier to seeking traditional mental health care, Healing with the Senses sought to address this gap by offering approachable, low-barrier strategies that individuals could immediately incorporate into their daily lives.
Throughout the day, participants engaged in a wide range of activities, from gardening workshops and art therapy sessions to tai chi, meditation, nutrition, music therapy, acupressure and aromatherapy. In one session, DGSOM student Wilson Yeh guided attendees through planting basil seeds while sharing the therapeutic benefits of gardening and cooking with fresh herbs. Others explored calligraphy and creative expression as tools for stress relief or learned how scent-based practices can support relaxation and balance.
Artists and community facilitators brought a personal dimension to the experience. One workshop leader shared how art became a pathway for her own mental health, noting, “It’s important for me to share a space like this with the community, and to get off our phones. This experience heals my soul.” Her reflection underscored the power of accessible, culturally meaningful practices in promoting emotional wellness.
CSC CEO Peter Ng captured the heart of the event, reminding attendees that “healing doesn’t look the same for everyone. Healing happens through connection, community and practices that allow us to reflect on who we are and how we can care for each other.”
Department leadership also emphasized the broader impact of the partnership. Executive Vice Chair for the DoM’s Office of Community Engagement Keith Norris, MD, PhD highlighted that through collaborations like this, we can promote health strategies that are both affordable and culturally resonant. “Our goal,” he noted, “is to create the healthiest Los Angeles possible.”
Healing with the Senses stands as a powerful example of how academic medicine and community partners can come together to advance health equity. By centering accessibility, culture and connection, CEWM and CSC continue to redefine what community-based care can look like, and it must include practical tools for wellness while strengthening the bonds that support healthier communities.
Join Us at the Early-Career Physician-Scientist Grand Rounds!
I will close out this week's newsletter by inviting you to learn more about the wonderful research going on here in the DoM next Thursday, May 28 at noon, when the DoM will host a special Grand Rounds that will feature work of three outstanding early-career LEADERS in academic medicine: Jane C. Fazio, MD, PhD; Joey H. Li, PhD; and Aleksandr Gorin, MD, PhD. I encourage you to attend in person if you can — a reception will follow. Find more information at this link.
Dale
P.S.
I hope you had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. For those of you who had to work, thank you for your duty to our patients. This weekend I was blessed by a brief visit to L.A. by my mom and older brother (his first time). So, we spent some time outdoors! My mom reminded me that she clocked over 16,000 steps during the visit.
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