By Nicholas Roznovsky
The Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science (IAPHS) has chosen UC San Francisco researcher Nancy Adler, PhD, to receive its 2020 J. Michael McGinnis Leadership Excellence Award. She is the second recipient of the award, which was established last year to honor individuals who have made significant leadership contributions to improving population health and equity through research translation, health policy, or academic research.
Adler is the Lisa and John Pritzker Professor of Psychology in the Departments of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Pediatrics, a vice chair in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and director of the UCSF Center for Health and Community. She also directs the National Program Office of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Evidence for Action Program, which supports research on policies and programs that aim to improve population health and promote health equity.
Her earlier research used psychological decision models to understand health behaviors, with a particular focus on the determinants and consequences of pregnancy, infertility, and abortion. Her current work examines the pathways from socioeconomic status to health and explores interventions to address the social and behavioral determinants of health. She is working to expand standard collection of information on these determinants of health in electronic health records and to document the impact of having this information on clinical care and health outcomes.
Adler earned her BA from Wellesley College and her PhD in psychology from Harvard University. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among her previously received honors are the American Psychological Society's James McKeen Cattell Award, the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Scientific Award for the Application of Psychology, the Institute for Women’s Health Leadership's Marion Spencer Fay Award, the National Academy of Medicine's David Rall Medal, and the Medal for Distinguished Contributions to Biomedical Sciences from the New York Academy of Medicine.
Adler will receive the award on September 30, 2020 during the opening plenary session of the IAPHS' annual conference.
About UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care, and public service.
UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences conducts its clinical, educational, and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital; UCSF Medical Centers at Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay, and Mount Zion; UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland; Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; the San Francisco VA Health Care System; UCSF Fresno; and numerous community-based sites around the San Francisco Bay Area.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Neurology, Psychiatry, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area.
