A professor at the Department of Clinical Pharmacy and the Director of the Medication Outcomes Center, Rosa Rodriguez-Monguio’s research focuses on improving patient outcomes while containing the cost of pharmaceutical treatments and services. As a health economist with 20 years of experience in pharmaceutical economics, policy and health outcomes research, she incorporates quantitative research methodologies to assess the effect of prescribing practices and drug utilization on patient safety and outcomes, and health care cost. In addition, Rosa devotes an important part of her research endeavors to evaluate the root causes, economic impact and adverse events associated with drug shortages. Her research interests also include applying economic evaluation models to inform evidence-based medication decision-making.
Rosa's teaching and mentoring goals are to support our students, residents and fellows professional development to integrate and apply pharmacoeconomic principles, methods and applications to inform clinical practice and efficient allocation of resources, and ultimately, to enhance patient care and health outcomes.
Kendall Gross is a Critical Care Pharmacist practicing in the Medical/Surgical Intensive Care Units at the UCSF Medical Center. She is also an Associate Clinical Professor in the School of Pharmacy at UCSF and works in the Medication Outcomes Center conducting research and improvement work.
Her interests in patient outcomes, implementation science, and interdisciplinary collaboration have led her to complete numerous quality- and safety-based research projects in areas such as pain, sedation, delirium and sleep management, sepsis, and renal replacement therapy. She is especially interested in using the electronic health record (EHR) to enhance safe and appropriate medication therapy and the role of data in informing optimal medication use. Much of her work centers on how we can use the EHR to increase the adoption of best practices, and she collaborates with others in the medical center to operationalize new medication therapies and decision support. She is also engaged in training pharmacy residents and students, including as an advisor to the resident research certificate program.
Kendall received her PharmD from the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy. She completed residencies in Pharmacy Practice and Critical Care at the University of Kentucky before joining UCSF in 2010. Kendall holds dual Board Certifications in Pharmacotherapy and Critical Care.
Zhixin Lun's work at the MOC involves developing and executing mathematical models and applied statistics in pharmaceutical economics and health outcomes evaluation using large-scale electronic medical record and administrative claims datasets.
Her work focuses on applications of advanced statistical methods, machine learning approaches and predictive analytics. Her research interest is in methodological approaches to address non-normal data and missing data including multiple imputation via copula transformation and Bayesian inference. Zhixin, has research experience in multivariate data reduction and discrimination for high-dimensional data, statistical modeling in survival analysis, and spatial data mining using cluster analysis. She has over six years of experience in statistical programming using R, SAS, and Python. She is the co-author of two R packages.
Zhixin holds a PhD in applied mathematics from Oakland University, specializing in applied statistics.
Shalini (Shal) Lynch is involved in the development of Medication Use Evaluations for the UCSF Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee. She also precepts student and resident pharmacists in the Medication Outcomes Center. Shal lectures in the School of Pharmacy curriculum on various drug information topics and inflammatory bowel disease.
Shal’s practice expertise includes drug information, literature evaluation, drug utilization review, medication therapy management, geriatrics, and the pharmaceutical industry. She has five years of experience in post-marketing safety surveillance and as a medical science liaison in the pharmaceutical industry. Additional experiences include cost-effective medication management programs in a medical group setting, target drug programs, quality, and utilization management. Her clinical experience includes individual patient consults to minimize out-of-pocket medication expenses, Medicare Part D plan review, and interdisciplinary clinical geriatrics. Shal supports the UCSF School of Pharmacy in its role as an academic subcontractor to the State of California’s Medi-Cal Drug Utilization Review program. She has served as a contributor to the Merck Manual and as a Consulting Editor for Textbook of Therapeutics. She regularly reviews articles for several professional journals.
Shal received her PharmD at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Pharmacy. She also completed a Pharmacy Practice Residency and Specialty Residency in Drug Information at UCSF. She is a Board Certified Geriatric Pharmacist.
Seema Saharan conducts multi-modality big data cutting age research at the MOC. Her passion lies in pioneering cutting-edge statistical and modeling methods, unraveling insights into health outcomes for patients with Alzheimer disease and related dementias. Seema's expertise centers on prediction and pattern classification. Her work empowers informed clinical choices by delving deep into big data-driven biostatistics, machine learning, and state-of-the-art AI techniques for treatment-related evaluations.
Seema holds a Ph.D. in statistics with a Data Science focus. Her doctoral journey encompassed optimizing statistical exploratory analyses, uncovering the intricate behavior of proinflammatory cytokine cascades transported by HDL/Plasma. These insights shed light on conditions like cardiovascular diseases, Alzheimer's, and cancer, shaping a healthier future.
Trang Trinh has extensive clinical and research training in infectious diseases pharmacoepidemiology. Currently, her research focuses on the epidemiology and clinical outcomes of multi-drug resistant bacterial infections. Through collaborations with the UCSF Medical Center antimicrobial stewardship program, Trang brings an analytical pharmacotherapy perspective to optimize antimicrobial use in patients with limited treatment options. She is especially interested in standardizing infectious disease study methodologies and leadership/change management to innovate appropriate antimicrobial prescribing strategies in the outpatient setting. In addition to her research focus, Trang also teaches epidemiology, study design, and infectious disease pharmacotherapy in the School of Pharmacy curriculum. She precepts and mentors pharmacy students and residents on their research projects.
Trang received her PharmD from the University of Maryland, School of Pharmacy. She completed residencies in Pharmacy Practice and Infectious Diseases Pharmacotherapy at the University of Florida Health Shands Hospital, followed by two years of fellowship in Infectious Diseases Outcomes Research at the Anti-Infective Research Laboratory at Wayne State University where she also received her MPH. Trang holds dual Board Certifications in Pharmacotherapy and Infectious Disease.
In her work with the MOC, Candy Tsourounis is involved in providing evidence-based reviews of recently approved prescription medications, gene, and cellular therapies. These reviews help inform the UCSF Medical Center community, UCSF Health, and UC Systemwide on the role and value these therapies offer. Working with her medical center colleagues, Candy also performs medication utilization analyses.
Candy has various areas of research interest, including value-based care, quality improvement, implementation science, evidence-based practice, drug information, literature evaluation and dietary supplements. Her research focus has been on dietary supplement safe use and drug-supplement interactions. While she continues to contribute to this field, she focuses on demonstrating the value of pharmacists in medication management and value-based initiatives. Candy is very involved in educating consumers and health professionals on the rational use of medicines and related therapies. She serves as a clinical consultant and editor for various drug-related publications and computer software programs used by pharmacists and pharmacy learners worldwide. She has coordinated various continuing education programs for national pharmacy societies and serves as a speaker nationally and internationally on the practice of pharmacy.
In her work at the MOC, Elise Wozniak supports the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee (P&T Committee) which is a subcommittee of the Executive Medical Board. She assists with the triaging of formulary addition requests and extensions for medication use in the inpatient and outpatient setting. Elise works with clinical pharmacists and learners to prepare evidence-based reviews of medications being brought to the P&T Committee for review. Elise also assists the Chair of the P&T Committee in leading the P&T Committee meetings. In addition, once medications have been added to the UCSF Health formulary, Elise works with the medical center to implement the decisions into the electronic medical record, the operation, and with staff education. In addition, Elise assists with drug use evaluations by identifying opportunities to improve drug utilization and cost-effective prescribing.
Elise graduated from the University of Illinois, College of Pharmacy, and completed a Pharmacy Practice Residency at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. She then worked as an internal medicine pharmacist at Northwestern, and later became a pharmacy manager at Northwestern Memorial Hospital prior to joining UCSF in 2022.
