People

Samantha Schilf

Executive Director, AME Center

Samantha Schilf is the Executive Director for the UCSF Aging, Metabolism, and Emotion (AME) Center and the Sugar, Stress, Environment, and Weight (SSEW) Center. She joined the UCSF Center for Health and Community as a project manager in 2010, and has supported various research efforts that examine how the stress-disease link can be broken when individuals engage in regular restorative health behaviors (i.e., exercise, mindfulness meditation, mindful eating).

Nancy Adler, PhD

Professor Emeritus

Nancy E. Adler, Ph.D. is the Lisa and John Pritzker Professor of Psychology at the UCSF, and directs the Center for Health and Community.

Kirstin Aschbacher, PhD

ASSOC ADJ PROF-FY

FOCUS: Dr. Kirstin Aschbacher is an Associate Professor and Data Scientist in the Division of Cardiology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Aschbacher is passionate about “digital lifestyle medicine” – i.e., using technology to help people prevent and manage disease through healthy lifestyle change.

Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD

Professor

Biochemistry and Biophysics

Dr. Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Morris Herztein Professor of Biology and Physiology in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, is a leader in the area of telomere and telomerase research.

Claire Brindis, DrPH

Distinguished Professor

Institute for Health Policy Studies

Claire Brindis, DrPH, is a Distinguished Emerita Professor of Pediatrics and Health Policy (on Recall), Department of Pediatrics and Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Health Sciences and Emerita Director of the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies (PRL-IHPS) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr.

Nicki Bush, PhD

Professor In Residence

Psychiatry

Dr. Bush is the Lisa and John Pritzker Distinguished Professor of Developmental and Behavioral Health, jointly appointed as a Full Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and of Pediatrics, and the Director (Division Chief) of the Division of Developmental Medicine. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Center for the Developing Child and a member of the UCSF Institute for Health Policy Studies.

Jyu-Lin Chen, RN, PhD, FAAN

Professor and Chair

Family Health Care Nursing

My research on childhood obesity prevention addresses a preventable global health problem and one with important implications for global health nursing research and practice. Childhood obesity is one of the most serious global public health challenges of the 21st century. Approximately 170 million children (aged less than 18 years) worldwide are overweight and about 31 million of these are living in low and middle-income countries (LMIC). The increased prevalence of childhood obesity is 30% higher in LMIC (such as China, Hong Kong and Taiwan) than that of developed countries. Dr.