Urmimala Sarkar, MD, MPH

Professor

Urmimala Sarkar MD, MPH is Professor of Medicine at UCSF in the Division of General Internal Medicine, Associate Director of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations, and a primary care physician at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital’s Richard H. Fine People's Clinic. Her work work centers on innovating for health equity, to improve the safety and quality of outpatient care for everyone, especially low-income and diverse populations. See more of the team's work on our website (link below). Dr. Sarkar believes that mentoring and training with commitment to diversity and inclusion are critical to achieving health equity. She is the director of UCSF's Primary Care Research Fellowship, co-directs the Learning Health Systems Early Career Acceleration Program (LEAP K12) for junior faculty, and serves as the curricular director for UCSF's Fellowship Advancement and Skills Training in Clinical Research (FASTCaR). She aims to catalyze health equity scholarship by mentoring students, residents, fellows, and junior faculty at UCSF and beyond.
Education
Fellow, 2008 - Internal Medicine, University of California, San Francisco
Residency, 2005 - Internal Medicine, University of California, San Francisco
Intern, 2003 - Internal Medicine, University of California, San Francisco
M.D., 2002 - , University of California, San Diego
M.P.H., 2000 - Epidemiology, University of California, Berkeley
B.S. Biology, 1996 - , Stanford University
Websites
Publications
  1. Assessing Mobile Phone Digital Literacy and Engagement in User-Centered Design in a Diverse, Safety-Net Population: Mixed Methods Study.
  2. Time for Neurologists to Drop the Reflex Hammer on Hypertension.
  3. An electronic registry to improve adherence to active surveillance monitoring among men with prostate cancer at a safety-net hospital: protocol for a pilot study.
  4. Collective intelligence in medical decision-making: a systematic scoping review.
  5. Evaluation of a Health Information Technology-Enabled Collective Intelligence Platform to Improve Diagnosis in Primary Care and Urgent Care Settings: Protocol for a Pragmatic Randomized Controlled Trial.
  6. Social Media as a Tool to Promote Health Awareness: Results from an Online Cervical Cancer Prevention Study.
  7. Sharing Stories, Searching for Solutions: Sexual Harassment of Physicians by Patients.
  8. Defining and Measuring Adherence in Observational Studies Assessing Outcomes of Real-world Active Surveillance for Prostate Cancer: A Systematic Review.
  9. Facts or stories? How to use social media for cervical cancer prevention: A multi-method study of the effects of sender type and content type on increased message sharing.
  10. Adapting Patient Experience Data Collection Processes for Lower Literacy Patient Populations Using Tablets at the Point of Care.
  11. Health Information-seeking Behaviors and Preferences of a Diverse, Multilingual Urban Cohort.
  12. High perceived social support and hospital readmissions in an older multi-ethnic, limited English proficiency, safety-net population.
  13. Follow-up of incidental pulmonary nodules and association with mortality in a safety-net cohort.
  14. Differences in Narrative Language in Evaluations of Medical Students by Gender and Under-represented Minority Status.
  15. A Qualitative Analysis of Outpatient Medication Use in Community Settings: Observed Safety Vulnerabilities and Recommendations for Improved Patient Safety.
  16. A Randomized Trial to Train Vulnerable Primary Care Patients to Use a Patient Portal.
  17. Perceptions of cervical cancer prevention on Twitter uncovered by different sampling strategies.
  18. Standardization in Diverse Populations: Implementation of Evidence-Based Practices in a Safety-Net Setting.
  19. Decisions and repercussions of second victim experiences for mothers in medicine (SAVE DR MoM).
  20. Redesigning primary care in the safety net: A qualitative analysis of team-based care implementation.
  21. Feasibility of implementing mobile technology-delivered mental health treatment in routine adult sickle cell disease care.
  22. Exploring Identities and Preferences for Intervention Among LGBTQ+ Young Adult Smokers Through Online Focus Groups.
  23. Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia (PJP) prophylaxis patterns among patients with rheumatic diseases receiving high-risk immunosuppressant drugs.
  24. Accurate Measurement In California's Safety-Net Health Systems Has Gaps And Barriers.
  25. Learning From Patients' Experiences Related To Diagnostic Errors Is Essential For Progress In Patient Safety.
  26. Patient Engagement In Health Care Safety: An Overview Of Mixed-Quality Evidence.
  27. Innovative Implementation Studies Conducted in US Safety Net Health Care Settings: A Systematic Review.
  28. Safety-net institutions in the US grapple with new cholesterol treatment guidelines: a qualitative analysis from the PHoENIX Network.
  29. Efficiency, Efficacy, and Power in the Implementation of a Medication Adherence Aid.
  30. Implementation of patient-centered prescription labeling in a safety-net ambulatory care network.
  31. Using Social Media to Target Cancer Prevention in Young Adults: Viewpoint.
  32. Language-concordant automated telephone queries to assess medication adherence in a diverse population: a cross-sectional analysis of convergent validity with pharmacy claims.
  33. Representations of Codeine Misuse on Instagram: Content Analysis.
  34. Improving Patient Safety in Public Hospitals: Developing Standard Measures to Track Medical Errors and Process Breakdowns.
  35. Pragmatic Insights on Patient Safety Priorities and Intervention Strategies in Ambulatory Settings.
  36. Clinician Perspectives on the Management of Abnormal Subcritical Tests in an Urban Academic Safety-Net Health Care System.
  37. Meaningful use in the safety net: a rapid ethnography of patient portal implementation at five community health centers in California.
  38. Use of Complementary Health Approaches Among Diverse Primary Care Patients with Type 2 Diabetes and Association with Cardiometabolic Outcomes: From the SF Bay Collaborative Research Network (SF Bay CRN).
  39. Efficiency and Interpretability of Text Paging Communication for Medical Inpatients: A Mixed-Methods Analysis.
  40. Implementation science for ambulatory care safety: a novel method to develop context-sensitive interventions to reduce quality gaps in monitoring high-risk patients.
  41. Implementation Science Workshop: Barriers and Facilitators to Increasing Mammography Screening Rates in California's Public Hospitals.
  42. Performance Measurement and Target-Setting in California's Safety Net Health Systems.
  43. Seeing the Effect of Health Care Delivery Innovation in the Safety Net.
  44. Designing and Implementing an Electronic Patient Registry to Improve Warfarin Monitoring in the Ambulatory Setting.
  45. Online patient websites for electronic health record access among vulnerable populations: portals to nowhere?
  46. Using health-system-wide data to understand hepatitis B virus prophylaxis and reactivation outcomes in patients receiving rituximab.
  47. The Next Frontier in Communication and the ECLIPPSE Study: Bridging the Linguistic Divide in Secure Messaging.
  48. Inadequate Utilization of Diagnostic Colonoscopy Following Abnormal FIT Results in an Integrated Safety-Net System.
  49. Understanding the barriers to successful adoption and use of a mobile health information system in a community health center in São Paulo, Brazil: a cohort study.
  50. Changes in Medication Use After Dementia Diagnosis in an Observational Cohort of Individuals with Diabetes Mellitus.
  51. Root Cause Analysis of Ambulatory Adverse Drug Events That Present to the Emergency Department.
  52. Minding the Gaps: Assessing Communication Outcomes of Electronic Preconsultation Exchange.
  53. Usability of Commercially Available Mobile Applications for Diverse Patients.
  54. Characterizing a Naturalistic Decision Making Phenomenon: Loss of System Resilience Associated with Implementation of New Technology.
  55. Applying Sparse Machine Learning Methods to Twitter: Analysis of the 2012 Change in Pap Smear Guidelines. A Sequential Mixed-Methods Study.
  56. Online public reactions to frequency of diagnostic errors in US outpatient care.
  57. Qualitative analysis of programmatic initiatives to text patients with mobile devices in resource-limited health systems.
  58. Re: A systematic review of patients' experiences of adverse events in health care.
  59. Tip of the iceberg: patient safety incidents in primary care.
  60. Barriers and Facilitators to Online Portal Use Among Patients and Caregivers in a Safety Net Health Care System: A Qualitative Study.
  61. Hospitalization-Associated Disability in Adults Admitted to a Safety-Net Hospital.
  62. The Effect of a Care Transition Intervention on the Patient Experience of Older Multi-Lingual Adults in the Safety Net: Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial.
  63. A Mixed-Methods Study of Patient-Provider E-Mail Content in a Safety-Net Setting.
  64. Refilling medications through an online patient portal: consistent improvements in adherence across racial/ethnic groups.
  65. The Canary in the Coal Mine Tweets: Social Media Reveals Public Perceptions of Non-Medical Use of Opioids.
  66. Reach and Validity of an Objective Medication Adherence Measure Among Safety Net Health Plan Members with Diabetes: A Cross-Sectional Study.
  67. Readability assessment of patient-provider electronic messages in a primary care setting.
  68. Connecting the Dots: Health Information Technology Expansion and Health Disparities.
  69. Disclosure of complementary health approaches among low income and racially diverse safety net patients with diabetes.
  70. Automated Telephone Self-Management Support for Diabetes in a Low-Income Health Plan: A Health Care Utilization and Cost Analysis.
  71. Health literacy, vulnerable patients, and health information technology use: where do we go from here?
  72. Functional disability in late-middle-aged and older adults admitted to a safety-net hospital.
  73. Support from hospital to home for elders: a randomized trial.
  74. A Qualitative Analysis of Physician Perspectives on Missed and Delayed Outpatient Diagnosis: The Focus on System-Related Factors.
  75. Getting a technology-based diabetes intervention ready for prime time: a review of usability testing studies.
  76. "Missing pieces"--functional, social, and environmental barriers to recovery for vulnerable older adults transitioning from hospital to home.
  77. A large-scale quantitative analysis of latent factors and sentiment in online doctor reviews.
  78. Low socioeconomic status is associated with increased risk for hypoglycemia in diabetes patients: the Diabetes Study of Northern California (DISTANCE).
  79. Diabetes health information technology innovation to improve quality of life for health plan members in urban safety net.
  80. Use of the refill function through an online patient portal is associated with improved adherence to statins in an integrated health system.
  81. Expanding the Universal Medication Schedule: a patient-centred approach.
  82. Care partners and online patient portals.
  83. Innovation and transformation in California's safety net health care settings: an inside perspective.
  84. Long-term doctor-patient relationships: patient perspective from online reviews.
  85. Patient-provider communication and trust in relation to use of an online patient portal among diabetes patients: The Diabetes and Aging Study.
  86. Safety events during an automated telephone self-management support intervention.
  87. Trends in on-label and off-label modafinil use in a nationally representative sample.
  88. Additional considerations for 'Harnessing the cloud of patient experience'.
  89. "5 mins of uncomfyness is better than dealing with cancer 4 a lifetime": an exploratory qualitative analysis of cervical and breast cancer screening dialogue on Twitter.
  90. Points for improvement: performance measurement for glycemic control in diabetes patients in a safety-net population.
  91. Do clinical standards for diabetes care address excess risk for hypoglycemia in vulnerable patients? A systematic review.
  92. Access, interest, and attitudes toward electronic communication for health care among patients in the medical safety net.
  93. Ice cream rounds.
  94. Communication about diabetes risk factors during between-visit encounters.
  95. Electronic health record implementation in outpatient safety-net settings in California.
  96. Lower health literacy is associated with poorer health status and outcomes in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
  97. Challenges of making a diagnosis in the outpatient setting: a multi-site survey of primary care physicians.
  98. Signal and noise: applying a laboratory trigger tool to identify adverse drug events among primary care patients.
  99. Evaluation of language concordant, patient-centered drug label instructions.
  100. A cross-sectional study of barriers to personal health record use among patients attending a safety-net clinic.
  101. Developing multilingual prescription instructions for patients with limited english proficiency.
  102. Quasi-experimental trial of diabetes Self-Management Automated and Real-Time Telephonic Support (SMARTSteps) in a Medicaid managed care plan: study protocol.
  103. What patients say about their doctors online: a qualitative content analysis.
  104. The wrong tool for the job: diabetes public health programs and practice guidelines.
  105. Food insecurity and hypoglycemia among safety net patients with diabetes.
  106. Adverse drug events in U.S. adult ambulatory medical care.
  107. Adherence to laboratory test requests by patients with diabetes: the Diabetes Study of Northern California (DISTANCE).
  108. Social disparities in internet patient portal use in diabetes: evidence that the digital divide extends beyond access.
  109. Validation of self-reported health literacy questions among diverse English and Spanish-speaking populations.
  110. Patient-physicians' information exchange in outpatient cardiac care: time for a heart to heart?
  111. Hypoglycemia is more common among type 2 diabetes patients with limited health literacy: the Diabetes Study of Northern California (DISTANCE).
  112. What happens between visits? Adverse and potential adverse events among a low-income, urban, ambulatory population with diabetes.
  113. The literacy divide: health literacy and the use of an internet-based patient portal in an integrated health system-results from the diabetes study of northern California (DISTANCE).
  114. Numbers don't lie, but do they tell the whole story?
  115. Refocusing the lens: patient safety in ambulatory chronic disease care.
  116. Frequency of failure to inform patients of clinically significant outpatient test results.
  117. Self-efficacy as a marker of cardiac function and predictor of heart failure hospitalization and mortality in patients with stable coronary heart disease: findings from the Heart and Soul Study.
  118. Does lower diabetes-related numeracy lead to increased risk for hypoglycemic events?
  119. Risk factors for death in adults with severe asthma.
  120. Use of an interactive, telephone-based self-management support program to identify adverse events among ambulatory diabetes patients.
  121. Preferences for self-management support: findings from a survey of diabetes patients in safety-net health systems.
  122. SynopSIS: integrating physician sign-out with the electronic medical record.
  123. Factors associated with longer ED lengths of stay.
  124. Self-efficacy and health status in patients with coronary heart disease: findings from the heart and soul study.
  125. Is self-efficacy associated with diabetes self-management across race/ethnicity and health literacy?
  126. Population-based case-control investigation of risk factors for leptospirosis during an urban epidemic.