Lillian Gelberg

Dr. Gelberg is a family physician, health services researcher, and professor in UCLA’s Department of Family Medicine and Fielding School of Public Health and the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. She is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and associate director of the UCLA Primary Care Research Fellowship. Her current research focuses on clinical trials to reduce risky drug use and promote healthy lifestyle change in low income populations using leading behavior change methodologies supported by wireless technology. Over the past 2 decades, Dr. Gelberg has conducted community-based health services research to improve the health and quality of care of our nation’s most vulnerable populations, and has developed the art and science of collecting data under the most difficult field conditions, including the shelters, meal programs, parks, streets, and busy community health centers of Los Angeles County.

The proposed project aims to build a cohort of UCLA primary care patients by integrating universal self-administered computerized (via MyChart) screening for tobacco (including noncombustibles) and marijuana use/co-use to: (a) assess rates of tobacco and marijuana use/co-use, (b) understand links with health outcomes recorded in electronic health records (EHR) of UCLA Primary Care Patients. In addition, the project will harness geospatial data (from EHR) to identify clusters of neighborhoods with elevated rates of tobacco and marijuana use/co-use and link these de-identified data with health outcomes data to understand links with disparities. The proposed project is funded by the Tobacco-Related Diseases Research Program (TRDRP).