Newswise — Alka M. Kanaya, MD, UC San Francisco primary care physician and researcher, is being recognized with the 2023 Kelly West Award for Outstanding Achievement in Epidemiology from the American Diabetes Association (ADA). The award recognizes significant contributions to the field of diabetes epidemiology.
Kanaya’s clinical research focuses on the causes and prevention of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. She has developed a three-pronged research program to investigate the relationship between type 2 diabetes and obesity and cardiovascular disease. The first study arm uses existing studies to test new biomarkers (measurable substances in the body) that predict diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The second arm studies sociocultural, behavioral and biological risk factors in South Asian patients, who have a higher cardiometabolic disease prevalence compared with other ethnic groups. The final arm studies behavioral interventions, such as restorative yoga, to determine whether they prevent the onset of diabetes in high-risk groups.
“Dr. Kanaya has concentrated on clinical/epidemiologic research in type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease prevention,” wrote ADA. “She has focused her research on Asian American health disparities over the past two decades and has made seminal contributions in this area with the creation of a South Asian longitudinal cohort study and with analyses from other large datasets, including from the Northern California Kaiser Permanente data, the Health, Aging and Body Composition study, and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. She has led the Mediators of Atherosclerosis in South Asians Living in America (MASALA) study to better understand factors driving the high-risk factor prevalence among South Asians.”
“I thank the ADA for this recognition and am very grateful to my mentors and our MASALA team for their support and dedication,” said Kanaya.
The Kelly West Award is one of the 2023 National…
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