Given the current focus on health care value, quality, and cost, there is a well-recognized need for expertly trained clinicians conducting cutting-edge health services research. Urologic health services research was established as a discipline at UCLA in 1993 with the unique perspective of psychosocial outcomes, health policy, and the translational population sciences in urologic care. In collaboration with colleagues at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, RAND Health, the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, the UCLA School of Nursing, and the UCLA Anderson School of Management, , UCLA Urology has developed an internationally recognized research program that considers comparative effectiveness, medical outcomes, quality of care, health-related quality of life, informed decision-making, epidemiology, costs of diagnosis and treatment, resource utilization, and community-partnered research in urological care in the United States. The UCLA Urology Health Services Research Group faculty include Drs. Mark Litwin, Christopher Saigal, Sally Maliski, Karim Chamie, Jonathan Bergman, Stanley Frencher, and others. Collectively, they have attracted more than $125 million in peer-reviewed R01 and K series research grants and contracts from the NIH, DoD, American Cancer Society, and various foundations. This research in the translational population sciences ultimately impacts quality of care and cost-efficiency in our nation’s health care system. The UCLA Urology Health Services Research Group today is one of only a handful of such groups in the United States.
The objective of the fellowship is to prepare postdoctoral scholars for independent scientific careers in academic medicine. To that end, the training program provides structured, individualized mentoring for the trainees. The first objective is for each trainee to design and execute a hypothesis-driven research project(s) to be completed during the appointment period. A second goal is to teach trainees the skills necessary for high-quality presentation of data and concepts, whether abstracts for presentation, manuscript(s) for peer-reviewed publication, or hypothesis-driven grant applications, in preparation for K-awards and eventually R-awards. Throughout the research training, there is also be extensive career counseling provided by the Program Director and the fellowship mentors to help ensure the success of the trainees in establishing independent research agendas and careers.
Fellows receive formal training in the translational population sciences. Their work will focus on the conduct of research in areas of health services research, health policy, quality of care measurement, patient safety, medical outcomes assessment, comparative effectiveness, resource utilization, technology diffusion, access to care, and health care costs, for individuals and populations. Trainees will be required to take didactic coursework in these disciplines and to develop and carry out at least one study entirely generated by the trainee during the research period. Trainees will pursue a larger effort in didactic training as a means to obtain formal knowledge for a career in health services research.
UCLA Health Services Fellowship Program Director:
Christopher Saigal, MD
Professor and Vice Chair, Urology
If you are interested in applying for a UCLA Urology Health Services Fellowship position, please submit your CV, personal statement, and three letters of recommendation to:
Yissel Rojas
Fellowship Coordinator
Department of Urology
UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine
BOX 951740
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Phone: 310-825-9378
Fax: 310-206-7186
Email: yrojas@mednet.ucla.edu
