Meet the Team
Lisa Zubkoff, PhD, MS
Director
Dr. Zubkoff is an Associate Professor in the Division of Preventive Medicine in the Department of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She also serves as the Associate Director for Research at the Birmingham/Atlanta Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center (GRECC) at the Birmingham VA Health Care System. She received a Ph.D. and Master of Science from The Dartmouth Institute of Health Policy and Clinical Practice at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and completed a health services research post-doctoral fellowship at the VA Greater Los Angeles Health Care System, where her training focused on the field of implementation science. Her research focuses on developing and testing implementation strategies to improve the uptake of evidence-based practices. She has served as PI and Co-Investigator on several studies, including those funded by NIH, VA, and not-for-profits. Her recent work includes the adaptation of quality improvement collaboratives to a virtual learning collaborative as an implementation strategy to foster improvement in healthcare organizations. She is currently PI on an NCI funded study (NCI 1R01CA229197) comparing two strategies to implement an early concurrent palliative care program in community oncology practices.
Kelly Gagnon, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Email: kgagnon@uabmc.edu
Dr. Gagnon is a postdoctoral fellow in Infectious Diseases. She received her PhD in Behavioral and Community Health Sciences from the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health. Her work focuses on the implementation of evidence based practices to mitigate risk of HIV/STIs and substance use related injury among vulnerable populations. Currently, she working on translating her implementation science expertise to Dr. Zubkoff’s work in the Center of Cancer Control in Persistent Poverty Areas as a consultant in the Methods Core and on LEAP.
Jaimie Richards, PhD
Program Director II
Email: jaimierichards@uabmc.edu
Phone: 205-975-7914
Dr. Richards serves as the Program Director. She received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Science from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where her work focused on the return of genomic results following clinical whole genome sequencing, genetic ancestry predictions/modeling, and community-engaged research in genomics. Currently, she manages the programmatic tasks related to Dr. Zubkoff’s NIH, NCI, and VA studies. Her work on the Implementation Science Research Program involves 1. supporting the development and promotion of the studies, 2. acting as a resource for affiliated faculty and trainees, and 3. managing collaborations.
Jessica Jaiswal, PhD
D&I Consultant
Department of Family and Community Medicine
Email: jessicajaiswal@uabmc.edu
Jessica Jaiswal PhD, MPH is an NIH Benjamin-Carver FIRST Scientist and assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine in the Heersink School of Medicine. Her work focuses on structural racism, stigma and mistrust in the context of the HIV prevention, HIV care and substance use treatment continua. She is a CCTS K12 scholar working on implementation science approaches to increasing access to biomedical HIV prevention and medications for opioid disorder in community-based primary care settings.
Tracy Sims
Program Administrator
Email: tnsims@uabmc.edu
Phone: 205-975-5703
