HIV/AIDS Research – Drew CARES

CRECD Mentored Postdoctoral Training in Health Disparities
PI: Mohsen Bazargan, PhD
NIMHD/NIH Award # R25 MD007610

Overview
CRECD is a training grant (R25) funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. The goal of the training program is to provide training and mentoring in health disparities and community-partnered research (CPPR) to minority scholars and junior faculty at CDU, who have shown great academic promise but who still need advanced skills, close mentorship, and other support to become successful, independent scientists.

News and Events (2014)

• February 6: CRECD Advisory Committee Meeting
• March 19: EXPORT Retreat
• March 31-June 14: Practices of Evaluation in Health Services (UCLA)
• April 9: CRECD PI/PD Meeting in Bethesda
• May 29: CRECD Advisory Committee Meeting
• October 22-24: CRECD Scholar, Dr. Victor Chaban, keynote speaker at 2nd International Conference on Endocrinology, sponsored by the OMICS Group

About Us
Principal Investigator: Mohsen Bazargan, PhD
Co-Principal Investigator: Thomas Yoshikawa, MD
Program Coordinator: Lee Irons, PhD
Community Faculty:

• Aziza Lucas-Wright
• Norma Mtume
• Rev. Joe Waller

1st Cohort: 2012-present (Phase II Scholars)

Scholar	Rank	Department
Victor Chaban, PhD	Professor	Internal Medicine
Yanyuan Wu, MD	Assistant Professor	Internal Medicine, Division of Cancer Research and Training

2nd Cohort: 2013-present (Phase I Scholars)

Scholar	Rank	Department
Steven Chung, PhD	Assistant Professor	Internal Medicine, Division of Cancer Research and Training
James Tsao, MD	Assistant Professor	Internal Medicine, Division of Endocrinology
John Uyanne, MD	Assistant Professor	Internal Medicine
Hamed Yazdanshenas, MD	Assistant Professor	Family Medicine

Program

In order to train CRECD scholars to become health disparities and CPPR researchers, the Program has two primary educational components:
1. Didactic Training (e.g., seminars, courses)
2. Mentoring

Each CRECD scholar must have a Scholarship Oversight Committee (SOC) consisting of three members:

• one from the Academic Faculty track, who provides mentoring directly related to the scholar’s research
• one from the Community Faculty track, who provides mentoring to help the mentee become a CPPR researcher
• the third mentor is an academic faculty member with research interests different from those of the mentee for diversity in perspective, and who provides more general mentoring with regard to overall career development

Mentors:

6 Academic Mentors from

• CDU/UCLA Senior Faculty
• Harbor-UCLA

3 Community Mentors from

• CDU Community Faculty track
• Provide CPPR training to the scholars

9 Outside Field Mentors from

• CTSI-UCLA
• Project EXPORT
• RCMI-AXIS
• U54 Cancer Center
• CDU College of Science and Health

Resources

• Community-Partnered Participatory Research (CPPR) training curriculum taught by Community Faculty
• Responsible Conduct of Research training curriculum
• Leadership: What Is It, and How Do We Achieve It? curriculum

Opportunities to Participate in CRECD

If you are a postdoctoral trainee or junior faculty member at CDU, and you would like to apply to become a scholar in the CRECD program, contact Dr. Mohsen Bazargan at 323-357-3655 or mohsenbazargan@cdrewu.edu.

Presentations, Publications, Grants

Presentation, Publications, Grants	TOTAL
Presentations	11
Manuscripts in press/published	18
Grant proposals submitted Under review Scored Not funded Funded	12 4 1 3 4

Recent Publications

Jones L, Bazargan M, Lucas-Wright A, Vadgama JV, Vargas R, Smith J, Otoukesh S, Maxwell AE. Comparing perceived and test-based knowledge of cancer risk and prevention among Hispanic and African Americans: an example of community participatory research. Ethn Dis. 2013 Spring;23(2):210-6. PMID: 23530303; PMCID: PMC3747224.

Chung SS, Kang H, Kang HG. Urothelial differentiation of human amniotic fluid stem cells by urothelium specific conditioned medium. Cell Biol Int. 2013 Dec 23. doi: 10.1002/cbin.10232. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 24375948. PMCID: PMC3959875

Lucas-Wright A, Bazargan M, Jones L, Vadgama JV, Vargas R, Sarkissyan M, Smith J, Yazdanshenas H, Maxwell AE. Correlates of perceived risk of developing cancer among african-americans in South los angeles. J Community Health. 2014 Feb;39(1):173-80. doi: 10.1007/s10900-013-9756-z. PMID: 24026303; PMCID: PMC3889655.

Sarkissyan M, Wu Y, Chen Z, Mishra DK, Sarkissyan S, Giannikopoulos I, Vadgama JV.Vitamin D receptor Fok1 gene polymorphisms may be associated with CRC among African American and Hispanic participants. Cancer. 2014 Feb 7. doi: 10.1002/cncr.28565. [Epub ahead of print]. PMID: 24510435. NIHMS ID: NIHMS556858