Nancy Adler Seed Grants Program

Nancy Adler Seed Grants Program

adler asg

To strengthen research spanning medicine, public health, and the social sciences at UCSF, the Nancy Adler Seed Grants Program (ASG) will support projects focused on social and behavioral determinants of health. 

Annual budgets should not exceed $25,000, and total budgets should not exceed $35,000. Proposals are due by September 9, 2026. This opportunity is restricted to UCSF junior faculty and non-faculty academics, such as postdocs. 

Dr. Adler was a champion for the social sciences over her 45-year career at UCSF, 1977-2023. During Dr. Adler’s career at UCSF, she served as the Lisa and John Pritzker Professor and Vice Chair of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Pediatrics, and Director of the Center for Health and Community.   Much of her research explored how social and behavioral determinants “get under the skin” to shape health and health equity. She believed strongly in the importance of transdisciplinary collaboration for scientific advancement and frequently convened scholars from different disciplines to tackle complex problems.

Adler Awardees 2025
2025 Adler Seed Grant Awardees

In honor of Dr. Adler’s legacy, the ASG program will support research exploring relationships between social and behavioral drivers and health outcomes and/or interventions anticipated to influence those relationships. These funds are intended to help early career scientists from across UCSF to garner extramural funding (e.g., from NIH and other sources) for future research on social and behavioral drivers of health. To that end, applicants should clearly describe why the project is needed to inform the development of future projects. 

PRIORITY WILL BE GIVEN TO PROJECTS THAT:

  • Involve collaborations across departments or disciplines
  • Focus on understanding how social determinants shape health equity and can be part of interventions to improve health equity
  • Are anticipated to lead to extramural funding

ASG Program Application and Administration

ELIGIBILITY

UCSF-appointed assistant professors from any academic series and postdoctoral fellows with faculty mentorship are eligible to apply for internal funding. 

APPLICATION

Proposals should be submitted via email to Dina Dudum Freij ([email protected]) by 5pm on September 9, 2026 for consideration.   Please combine all proposal documents into one pdf.

BUDGETS AND APPROVALS

  • All research activities should be completed between November 1, 2026-October 31, 2028. Annual budgets should not exceed $25,000 and total budgets should not exceed $35,000. Applicants should note that shorter projects / smaller budgets are more likely to be supported due to limited funding.

  • Budgets can include personnel costs for UCSF investigators and research staff and/or other research costs.

  • In accordance with UCSF policy, all proposals involving human subjects research must undergo IRB review. Proposals that have not undergone such review may be reviewed and support may be awarded, but no funds will be released for empirical research until the proposal receives IRB approval. 

AWARDS

Grants will be reviewed by the ASG Program Committee and prioritized based on criteria described above and funding availability. We anticipate awarding 2 proposals in 2026. Award announcements will be made at the Nancy Adler Lectureship in the Fall of 2026.

GRANTEE EXPECTATIONS AND REPORTING

Awardees are expected to: 

 

  • Attend the annual Nancy Adler Lectureship on Oct 16, 2026 and in Oct 2027 (date TBD)

  • Present to the Center for Health and Community as part of the Coffee and Science lecture series in Fall 2027

  • Attend the CHC grant review working group meeting (held 3 times a year) throughout the award period

  • Submit a brief report summarizing project results at the end of the award period

ADLER SEED GRANT PROPOSAL FORMAT

COVER PAGE: Include the project title as well as the name, title, department, and email address for each investigator.

ABSTRACT: Include a brief one-paragraph abstract suitable for use in public reports.

NARRATIVE: The narrative should describe the plan of work, participants, and relevance to population health research. Research project proposals should summarize the research question, existing literature, plan for empirical research, and significance of the project that the seed grant will help you develop. Candidates also must specify in the narrative why the grant is likely to facilitate future extramural funding. 

LENGTH: 1-3 pages (for abstract and narrative). Proposals that are longer will not be reviewed nor returned to be shortened. If the seed grant proposal is related to currently funded or pending projects - including projects supported by internal or external funders - please briefly describe those other projects and describe how the seed grant project is distinct from (and leverages, when relevant) these other projects.

BIOSKETCH: Please include your NIH biosketch. 

BUDGET AND BUDGET JUSTIFICATION: The budget should itemize all expenses, indicating where applicable the time commitment of faculty or student research assistants. We recommend budgets include minimal to no faculty effort. 

Requests for data or computer hardware or software indicate specifically what the request is for (rather than simply "Software" or "Data") and the justification should briefly describe the need for this item.

Please note this is an internal grant mechanism at UCSF and no indirect costs should be included. 

2026 Awardees

Yeonjung (Jane) Lee, PhD, LSW: "Resources and Opportunities for Occupational Training and Support (ROOTS)-Design: Co-Developing a Culturally Grounded Workplace Intervention with Immigrant Dementia Direct CareWorkers and Family Caregivers"

Immigrant workers comprise 27% of the U.S. direct care workforce and play an essential role in caring for older adults living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD). Prior work by the PI found that immigrant direct care workers face compounded barriers, including limited dementia-specific training, language and cultural barriers, and few opportunities for career advancement, that contribute to burnout and turnover. This project will use formative focus groups and interviews with immigrant direct care workers and family caregivers to co-design the content of a workplace intervention combining dementia-specific training, English as a Second Language (ESL)/cultural orientation, and structured mentorship. By centering the perspectives of those who will use it, this project will produce a refine, participant-informed intervention ready for feasibility testing in a subsequent NIH RO3 application, advancing health equity for an essential but understudied segment of the dementia care workforce.

 

Daisy León Martinez, MD and Monica Alejandra Noriega, PsyD: "Apapachar (To Embrace the Soul): Addressing Sociopolitical Trauma as SocialDeterminants of Perinatal Health through Culturally Responsive Integrative Health Interventions"

Pregnant Latine individuals experience unique social determinants of health (SDOH) including anti-immigrant rhetoric, immigration enforcement threats, racial profiling, and lack of linguistically and culturally concordant medical care. These structural stressors elevate prenatal cortisol and increase the risk of adverse birth outcomes (e.g., preeclampsia, preterm birth, and fetal neurodevelopmental alterations). Apapachar ("To Embrace the Soul") is an integrative behavioral health model that embeds culturally and linguistically concordant perinatal mental health care into specialized obstetric care. This model explicitly identifies sociopolitical stressors as SDOH, names systemic harms, and integrates culturally specific practices into interdisciplinary obstetric care plans. This study will evaluate whether confronting sociopolitical harms within obstetric care using culturally and linguistically concordant interventions attenuates maternal stress responses, reduces perinatal mood and anxiety disorder (PMAD) symptoms during pregnancy and postpartum, and improves birth outcomes for Latine pregnant people with complex pregnancies.

Whitney Wells, PhD: "A Pilot Investigation into the Role of Publicly Funded Childcare as a Structural Mechanism to Reduce Inequities in Child Maltreatment"

Child maltreatment, including abuse and neglect, is estimated to impact as many as one third of children in the US. Maltreatment-related injuries pose an immediate risk to child health, in addition to long-term negative impacts on physical and mental health over the life course. Child maltreatment is structurally patterned by social determinants of health, with higher rates of maltreatment investigations among families in poverty, in areas with greater neighborhood disadvantage, and among Black and Hispanic families. Much existing research and public discussion focusses on individual blame and punishment for maltreatment rather than the structural factors that shape the social and behavioral determinants of child maltreatment. This project aims to increase focus on upstream factors shaping risk of child maltreatment and injury. This project will examine the potential for childcare-access programs to influence social factors that contribute to inequities in child maltreatment and injury. While affordable high-quality childcare can influence social and behavioral determinants of maltreatment, such as parents’ financial strain, employment, stress and coping, access to social services, and safe and stable environments for children, we lack evidence directly examining the relationship between childcare access and maltreatment and injuries. Moreover, there are stark inequities in access to childcare in the US, which may reinforce existing inequities in child maltreatment. This project will examine the relationship between state-funded free preschool (currently the largest source of universal childcare access) and the rate of child injuries using quasi-experimental methods. This study will link data on child emergency department visits and inpatient hospitalizations to data on state-funded preschool program availability and generosity. This pilot project will provide preliminary evidence and enable future research into the social and behavioral mechanisms through which structural interventions such as publicly funded childcare may influence disparities in child injury and maltreatment.

2025 Awardees

Brittany Bryant, DSW, LISW-CP(S): "Untangling Pseudo-Addiction and Provider Bias in Sickle Cell Disease: Behavioral and Social Determinants of Pain Management Inequities"
BB
Sickle cell disease (SCD) affects approximately 100,000 individuals in the United States, the majority of whom identify as Black. Pain is the hallmark of SCD, and opioid medications remain the standard treatment for acute and chronic vaso-occlusive pain. Despite evidence-based guidelines, individuals with SCD frequently encounter structural and interpersonal barriers to adequate pain management, including delayed treatment, undertreatment of pain, and accusations of “drug-seeking.” One conceptual driver of these inequities is pseudo-addiction, in which patient behaviors resemble addiction but may instead reflect inadequate pain relief. However, limited research has examined how provider bias, stigma, mistrust, and systemic inequities shape the labeling of opioid-related behaviors in SCD care.
This mixed-methods pilot study aims to investigate how behavioral and social determinants of health contribute to the misinterpretation of pain advocacy behaviors among individuals with SCD. We hypothesize that provider labeling of “drug-seeking” behaviors will correlate more strongly with structural inequities and psychosocial stressors than with objective markers of opioid misuse. Through the integration of patient-reported outcomes and qualitative interviews with patients and providers, this study will identify factors contributing to inequitable pain care and co-develop strategies to improve clinical decision-making.
This study directly addresses critical behavioral and social determinants of health, including racism, stigma, mistrust, and inequitable access to pain care. Findings will provide preliminary data to support future intervention development and larger-scale R34, and R01 studies aimed at reducing disparities in pain management and improving equitable care for individuals with SCD. Preliminary findings will also inform the development of an adoptable clinical decision support tool to assist providers in more objectively distinguishing true opioid use disorder from adaptive pain advocacy behaviors.
Trina Johnson, PhD: "From Structure to Symptoms: Examining Determinants of Racial Disparities in Opioid Overdose Risk"
NJ

Both fatal and nonfatal opioid overdose remain a major public health issue, with widening racial and ethnic disparities. Black communities now experience higher overdose rates than other racial and ethnic groups across many regions. These inequities are shaped by structural factors, including housing instability, incarceration, and unequal access to medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD). Structurally rooted social determinants of health are examined as mediators and moderators of racial disparities in opioid overdose risk across racialized groups. Housing instability and prior incarceration are considered as potential mediators of these disparities through increased structural vulnerability, while access to MOUD is evaluated as a potential moderator that may buffer the effects of these stressors. To identify pathways of risk and resilience, regression-based and causal inference methods are applied to a statewide administrative dataset from Massachusetts consisting of individually linked records covering approximately 98% of residents. This work aims to advance understanding of how structural conditions shape overdose disparities and to inform more equitable intervention strategies.

Sharad Wadhwani, MD, MPH: "Pilot-testing the HEalth Advocate for Children Undergoing Liver Transplantation (HEAL-Tx) – Type I Hybrid Effectiveness-Implementation RCT"
SW

Children who undergo liver transplantation and face material economic hardships — such as food insecurity and housing instability — are at heightened risk for graft rejection and poor long-term outcomes. However, it remains unknown whether addressing these hardships through a structured intervention can meaningfully improve post-transplant clinical outcomes. Dr. Wadhwani and colleagues have developed a Health Advocate intervention where a lay healthcare worker helps families address economic hardships. With the support of the Nancy Adler Seed grant, they will pilot-test the protocol for a hybrid effectiveness-implementation randomized controlled trial (HEAL-Tx). Families reporting material hardship at the time of transplant will be randomized to either an intensive Health Advocate intervention — in which a lay health worker helps families connect with community resources, navigate public benefits, and manage social barriers to care — or a tailored resource list with a single follow-up call. The primary outcome is the incidence of T-cell mediated rejection at 2 years. The study will also assess parent-reported outcomes and characterize implementation barriers and facilitators to support broad adoption across transplant programs. By testing a proven primary care model in a medically complex pediatric population, HEAL-Tx has the potential to demonstrate that addressing social adversity is not only feasible but essential to reducing disparities in transplant outcomes.

2024 Awardees

Elizabeth George, MBBS & Andreas Rauschecker, MD, PhD: “Effect of Social Determinants of Health on Early Brain Development: A Fetal MRI Study"
EGAR

Social determinants of health (SDOH) are known to affect childhood brain development. Recent data suggests that these effects of SDOH can be seen as early as in fetal life. However, it is unknown what domains of SDOH are critical to in utero development of different regions of the brain. To answer this question, Drs. George and Rauschecker will leverage the large institutional pre-existing database of fetal MRIs performed in normal fetuses and a deep-learning based pipeline for quantification of total and regional fetal brain volumes. From parental demographics, they will derive 3 different census-derived indices (social deprivation index, childhood opportunity index, and social vulnerability index) that capture various domains of SDOH and assess its effects on fetal brain volumes. The methods developed and tested in this study are scalable to multi-institution studies to study overarching national trends as well as regional variations without the need for prospective collection of SDOH metrics. Identification of socioeconomic factors that contribute to this early disparity in brain development will be crucial in informing public health policy and efforts to both mitigate deleterious exposure and identify targets for early intervention.

Jessica Hua, PhD: “Understanding How Social Determinants of Health ‘Get Under the Skin’ and Impact Neurobiology in Schizophrenia”
JH

Social and behavioral determinants of health (SBDHs) have been found to predict psychosis conversion. This has generated enthusiasm for SBDH-focused interventions (e.g., trauma and family-focused therapies) to improve health equity and clinical outcomes. Yet, a crucial piece remains unclear, how do SBDHs “get under the skin” and influence psychosis. Converging evidence shows that SBDHs, such as trauma and stress, can trigger biological changes leading to premature maturation, as reflected by early puberty and biological aging.  Premature brain maturation (or brain aging), a common metric of biological aging, is observed in schizophrenia. Moreover, premature brain maturation predicts psychosis conversion in individuals at clinical high-risk for psychosis (CHR-P). One hypothesis is that SBDHs directly influence psychosis conversion. Another possibility is that premature brain maturation mediates (at least partially) the process through which SBDHs increases risk for psychosis conversion. This proposal aims to: 1) assess prevalence rates of SBDHs and 2) examine brain maturation as a candidate biological intermediary by which SBDHs increase conversion risk. Findings can inform development of targeted interventions that reduce psychosis conversion risk across the socio-demographically and clinically heterogeneous CHR-P population, who are likely to be exposed to SBDHs. Such targeted interventions, which can slow down premature maturation in children exposed to adversity have the potential to advance clinical care and public policies aimed at increasing health equity in CHR-P adolescents and young adults.

Rachel Tomlinson, PhD: “Supporting Mothers, Shaping Minds: Exploring How Perinatal Interventions Influence Executive Functioning”
Rachel Tomlinson

Socioeconomic disadvantage is consistently related to disparities in executive functioning skills, a set of top-down processes crucial for successful regulation of goal-directed behavior. Effects of disadvantage on executive functioning are complex and persistent, as executive functioning is transmitted intergenerationally via multiple interacting pathways. For example, environmental stressors associated with disadvantage may undermine executive functioning for both parents and children. These stressors have cascading, transactional effects as they undermine parents’ ability to provide warm, supportive parenting, which is crucial for healthy executive functioning development. The best time to disrupt such a complex intergenerational pathway is during the perinatal period, providing the foundation for a healthier parent-child relationship from its very beginning. Perinatal Child-Parent Psychotherapy (P-CPP) is a two-generation treatment approach that addresses parental stressors while also supporting the nascent parent-child relationship in order to promote the child’s healthy development. The proposed research takes advantage of an upcoming pilot study of P-CPP by administering cutting-edge executive functioning measures to pregnant mothers and their infants at pre- and post-treatment, along with a battery of parenting, stress, and developmental outcome measures, testing the hypothesis that the earliest intervention during pregnancy on the parent-child relationship can have two-generation effects on cognitive outcomes.

2025 Awardee Presentations

2024 Awardee Presentations