UCSF Pepper Leadership

The UCSF Pepper Center is founded by our faculty of the UCSF Division of Geriatrics and it consists of 5 cores, each holding expertise in a unique research area:

Leadership and Administration Core: responsible for orchestrating research and program initiatives
Research Education Core: responsible for career development and mentorship of junior investigators
Pilot and Exploratory Studies Core: responsible for mentorship in bridging multidisciplinary investigators into aging-related research
Vulnerable Populations Aging Research Core: responsible for mentorship and providing expert guidance on qualitative research
Data Analysis Core: responsible for mentorship and providing expert guidance on quantitative research

Our Mission

Since 2013, the UCSF Pepper Center has developed, supported, and mentored an interdisciplinary community of investigators whose discoveries have enhanced the understanding of disability and functional decline in older adults.

We believe that successful aging encompasses having a good quality of life regardless of one’s medical conditions and functional impairments. We seek to understand the needs of the millions of older persons who need our help right now, whether because of complex medical circumstances or because of adverse social circumstances.

Our Center supports researchers who share our passion for improving the well-being of older persons. We view our resources as venture capital to catalyze the careers and research paths of investigators who will do cutting edge research that advances the care, health, and wellbeing of older persons, both within the UCSF community and nationally.

Our Leadership

Mike Steinman, MD

Center Co-Director | Data Analysis Core Co-leader

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Dr. Steinman is a national leader in identifying and improving the quality of medication prescribing in clinically complex older adults. He devotes most of his time to research, while also maintaining an active clinical practice in the geriatrics clinic and inpatient general medicine service at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. Dr. Steinman's research program focuses on improving how doctors prescribe medications for older adults, and is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and other funders. His research interests also include improving evaluation and care for older adults with multiple chronic conditions, and pharmaceutical industry marketing, and he has a strong interest in mentorship and supporting career development for junior investigators.

John Boscardin, PhD

Data Analysis Core Co-leader

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W. John Boscardin, Ph.D. is a biostatistician with a joint appointment as Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology & Biostatistics. His primary role with the Department of Medicine is as Director of the Statistical Laboratory for the Division of Geriatrics and for SFVAMC Health Services Research. The laboratory is comprised of six Master’s and Ph.D. level statisticians and provides data management, analytic support, and methodological input to more than a dozen principal investigators in geriatrics and health services. He is also one of the biostatistics faculty members for the CTSI K-Scholars Program based out of the Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, serving as statistical mentor to numerous junior investigators over the past several years.

Louise Walter, MD

Research & Education Core Co-leader

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Dr. Walter was appointed Chief of the UCSF Division of Geriatrics in July 2013 after serving as interim division chief since August 2012. In addition, Dr. Walter led a series of seminal studies demonstrating decisions to screen older adults for cancer are often dictated more by age than health such that many patients in poor health continue to undergo screening while many healthy older patients fail to get screened. Also, she discovered that cancer screening frequently leads to significant harms without benefit in patients in poor health and developed a taxonomy and quantification of screening harms. This research changed national VA quality indicators and convinced California state auditors to abandon their mandatory mammography policy for health plans that care for frail elders.

Alex Smith, MD, MS, MPH

Pilot & Exploratory Studies Core Co-leader

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Dr. Smith's research is focused on improving quality of life and patient-physician communication for older adults, particularly those with a limited prognosis.

Dr. Smith is PI of two NIA funded R01s to develop prognostic models for the general population of older adults and older adults with dementia. He is a prior recipient of NIA Paul Beeson K23, SGIM/T Franklin Williams Scholar, Greenwall Faculty Scholar, NIA Diversity Supplement, and National Palliative Care Research Center awards.

Dr. Smith is co-founder of ePrognosis.org, an online compendium of prognostic calculators, and with Dr. Eric Widera, he co-founded GeriPal, a blog and podcast that provides an open forum for the exchange of ideas between the geriatrics and palliative care communities.

Dr. Smith is a Deputy Editor at JAGS where he run the Junior Reviewer Program for early career faculty-researchers. Dr. Smith plays a major role in organizing the next generation of palliative care researchers through individual mentoring and participation in the Palliative Care Research Fellows Collaborative.

Rebecca Sudore, MD

Vulnerable Populations Aging Research Core Co-leader

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Dr. Rebecca Sudore is a geriatrician, palliative medicine physician, and clinician investigator. She also directs the Innovation and Implementation Center in Aging & Palliative Care (I-CAP) and the Vulnerable Populations for Aging Research Core of the NIA-funded Pepper Center.

Dr. Sudore conducts research to improve advance care planning and medical decision making for diverse, vulnerable older adults. To this end, she has designed, tested and disseminated innovative, patient centered tools including an easy-to-read advance directive in over 10 languages (http://www.iha4health.org/our-services/advance-directive/) and an interactive, advance care planning website called PREPARE (www.prepareforyourcare.org).

Krista Harrison, PhD

Vulnerable Populations Aging Research Core Co-leader

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Dr. Harrison, PhD, UCSF Assistant (waiting for news of promotion) Professor of Medicine was a former UCSF T32 research fellow and a Pepper Research Education Core (REC) Scholar, with her REC project entitled “Residence & End-of-Life Care among Elders with Dementia: Medical & Social Predictors”. Since then, her leadership has continued to grow. She is also a UCSF Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies Associate Director for Training and an Associate Director for the UCSF Division of Geriatrics T32 Aging Research program. Her expertise includes qualitative and quantitative research methods, health policy ethics, implementation science, and the translation of research to policy. As our new VARC Co-Director, she will be working alongside Dr. Rebecca (VARC Co-Director) to further develop our Center’s initiatives in assisting investigators with the skills and expertise needed to design and execute studies that include older participants with medical or social vulnerability, including enrolling and retaining older adults for a range of study designs.

Brie Williams, MD, MS

Pepper-Center for Vulnerable Populations Liaison and Criminal Justice and Policy Consultant

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Dr. Williams, MD, MS, UCSF Professor of Medicine, co-directed the Vulnerable Populations Aging Research Core since its inception. She has extensive expertise in integrating a public health and human rights perspective into criminal justice reform, with a focus on ending solitary confinement; improving compassionate release policies for incarcerated patients with serious illness; and enhancing the response to disability, dementia, and serious illness in correctional settings. She currently directs Amend at UCSF and co-directs the Aging Research in Criminal Justice Health (ARCH) Network. In July 2021, Dr. Williams took a leadership position at the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations (CVP) where she will help Dr. Margot Kushel build their Division’s program on policy-driven strategic science. The overarching goal of the CVP is to create actionable research to increase health equity, drive changes in policy and patient care, and partner with and improve communities through discovery, innovation, policy development, and advocacy. Through Dr. Williams’ leadership as our Pepper-CVP Liaison and Criminal Justice and Policy Consultant, we look forward to building greater partnerships between the Division of Geriatrics and the CVP.

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The UCSF Pepper Center is founded by our faculty of the UCSF Division of Geriatrics and it consists of 5 cores, each holding expertise in a unique research area:

Our Mission

Our Leadership

About Us