ADMINISTRATION

Co- Principal Investigators:  Rachel Caskey, MD, MAPP; Jun Ma, MD, PhD, FAHA, FABMR

Rachel Caskey, MD, MAPP

Dr. Caskey is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics; and a health services researcher at UIC.  She is Chief of the Division of Academic Internal Medicine and Geriatrics.  Her research focuses on investigating novel mechanisms to positively impact and incentivize preventive health behaviors which result in improved health outcomes.  Her recent projects focus on system-level changes to health care settings to improve outcomes for women and children; with an emphasis on improving access to care for postpartum women.  Dr. Caskey has an appointment at UIC’s school of public health in the Division of Maternal Child Health where she has taught courses on health outcomes.  She is a member of the UIC Cancer Center where she collaborates on efforts to reduce the incidence of cervical cancer.  Dr. Caskey has considerable experience mentoring undergraduate, graduate, medical student, resident, fellow and junior faculty members; including MD and PhD postdoctoral fellows.

Jun Ma, MD, PhD, FAHA, FABMR

Dr. Jun Ma is the Beth Fowler Vitoux and George Vitoux Distinguished Professor in Geriatrics the Division of Academic Internal Medicine and Geriatrics and Associate Head of Scholarly Activity in the Department of Medicine. She directs the Vitoux Program on Aging and Prevention. Dr. Ma’s research broadly seeks to address highly intractable health problems and disparities among racially/ethnically and socioeconomically diverse adult populations. Dr. Ma is particularly interested in effective prevention and control of debilitating and costly chronic conditions through comprehensive, mechanism-driven lifestyle interventions. Dr. Ma has directed the development and publication of new randomization methods and software programs. In addition to her extensive experience leading rigorous experiments ranging from pilot randomized studies to multicenter pragmatic trials, she has also published frequently on national patterns of outpatient care quality and health disparities in lifestyle-related physical and mental health disorders using complex population survey datasets.

Of central relevance to the PREMIER training program is Dr. Ma’s belief that for established scientists, mentoring is an obligation, not a choice – and for her personally, mentoring is a passion. She has substantial experience as a reviewer of T and K series grants for NIH, as a mentor of MD and/or PhD postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty in her previous and current appointments. Dr. Ma’s Center for Health Behavior Research hosts two weekly 1.5-hour meetings on Wednesdays, the Sunrise Meeting with Mentees and the afternoon Lifestyle Research Collaboratory, both of which will be open to all PREMIER fellows. The regular attendees include junior faculty, postdoctoral research professionals, PhD and Masters’ students. These meetings serve as a forum for collaborative grant development and for providing consultations and grant reviews to junior investigators.

PREMIER Coordinator

Amruta Barve, MPH

Ms. Barve is MPH with a background in Homeopathic Medicine and Surgery. Ms. Barve’s research interests include obesity and diabetes prevention and management of chronic health conditions through behavior and lifestyle interventions. She is also the Lead Clinical Research Coordinator for Dr. Ma’s “Engaging Self-regulation Targets to Understand the Mechanisms of Behavior Change and Improve Mood and Weight Outcomes.”

INSTRUCTIONS: In order to add a sidebar anchor:

  1. Duplicate the existing item, listed as a 1/6 text field. (Or create a 1/6 column and add a text field, modify the class so it's exactly "additionalAnchor").
  2. Modify the text field inside the 1/6 column. Inside there, modify the HYPERLINK so that it would go to a corresponding section with a "#" in front of it. (Example, we have a "chief" section on the page, then it would make sense to have the hyperlink go to "#chief")
  3. Then change the hyperlink TEXT to a appropriate label.
  4. IMPORTANT: If not done already, go into that CONTAINER that corresponds to your anchor (i.e. Meet The Chiefs), and add an ID matching the anchor's HYPERLINK WITHOUT the "#", i.e. "chief".
  5. (If using side bar widget box, then there's a saved copy of a widget box COLUMN, grab it in the column library, it should 1/6 of a length of a column.)

NOTE: Order added to the sidebar is from last to first.