CSDE Welcomes 3 New Research Affiliates
Posted: 10/11/2024 ()
CSDE is pleased to introduce three new CSDE Affiliates! Leah Marcotte (Assistant Professor, Medicine) focuses on using community-engaged and implementation research methods in collaboration with community partners and health system leaders to sustainably improve equity and quality in cancer screening. Sana Khalil (Assistant Professor, Economics) integrates experimental and quasi-experimental techniques with qualitative surveys to explore issues in labor economics, behavioral economics, environmental resource management, and gender and development. Magali Blanco’s (Research Scientist, DEOHS) current research interests are around air pollution exposure assessment, Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD), and social disparities. Learn more about each affiliate in the full story!
- Leah Marcotte – Leah Marcotte is an Assistant Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine in the Department of Medicine at the University of Washington (UW), a health services researcher, and a primary care physician. Her research is focused on using community-engaged and implementation research methods in collaboration with community partners and health system leaders to sustainably improve equity and quality in cancer screening. Prior to pursuing a career as a physician scientist, Dr. Marcotte worked in public policy and in health systems administration, most recently serving as Associate Medical Director for Population Health for the UW health system (2018-2020). In that role, she was exposed to a learning health system model with a focus in health equity in which we partnered with researchers to design and evaluate novel interventions for population health outreach. The experience of leveraging research methods to inform health systems interventions with the goal of improving quality and equity in care motivated me toward a career as a physician scientist. She pursued and was awarded a K12 learning health systems research grant to transition to a career in research. Having not had formal research methods training, she completed a Master of Science degree in Health Services at UW School of Public Health in 2022. She is currently working on a K08 Mentored Clinical Scientist Research Career Development Award proposal focused on addressing breast cancer screening inequities to submit to the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
- Sana Khalil -Sana Khalil is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Washington Tacoma. Dr. Khalil obtained her doctoral degree in economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in September 2022, where she was a US Fulbright doctoral fellow and received the 2018 Solomon Barkin Award for best research on improving the conditions of the working class. Her research interests are in applied microeconomics and econometrics, centered on exploring social and economic inequalities. In her research, she integrates experimental and quasi-experimental techniques with qualitative surveys to explore issues in labor economics, behavioral economics, environmental resource management, and gender and development. Her current research spans three interconnected strands: (1) Household water insecurities in Pakistan; (2) Cousin marriage, intrahousehold dynamics, and their impact on women’s paid work, and (3) labor market inequalities and employers’ hiring practices.
- Magali Blanco – Magali Blanco is an environmental exposure scientist with additional training in epidemiology, biostatistics, and data science. Her current research interests are around air pollution exposure assessment, Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD), and social disparities. The focus of her recently funded diversity MOSAIC K99/R00 is to better understand the mechanisms by which air pollution may impact Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia (ADRD) neuropathologies. This research will leverage her training and interests in air pollution monitoring design, quantitative exposure assessment, environmental health, ADRD, exposure mixtures, and advanced epidemiology.