Rashmi Sharma and Judith Tsui new GIM Directors of Research
Dr. Rashmi Kumar Sharma, MD MHS, associate professor and Dr. Judith Tsui, MD, MPH, professor, will serve as the new Directors of Research for the Division of General Internal Medicine.
They will work with the division head, section heads, clinical directors, fellowship directors, the faculty development team, research administrators and staff to set the tone and facilitate the conduct and dissemination of GIM research and other scholarly activities. They will also guide implementation of our strategic planning efforts related to research in partnership with the Department of Medicine (DOM) and University of Washington.
Rashmi Sharma, MD, MHS, is an associate professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Director of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for the UW Medicine Cambia Palliative Care Center of Excellence.
She completed medical school and an internal medicine residency at the University of Washington followed by a General Internal Medicine Fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University where she received a masters in health sciences from the Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Dr. Sharma’s research program focuses on improving the quality of care for patients with serious illness through multi-level interventions with a focus on minoritized and immigrant populations. She is currently the PI of two large mixed-methods studies that seek to address barriers to palliative care among patients with preferred language other than English and their family members in the context of dementia and advanced cancer. Dr. Sharma is also a board-certified palliative care physician and attends on the inpatient palliative care consult service at the University of Washington Medical Center. She also serves as co-Director of an NHLBI-funded T32 program to support palliative care research.
Judith Tsui, MD, MPH, is a professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine based at Harborview Medical Center.
She completed her medical degree and internal medicine residency training at New York University and Oregon Health Sciences University, respectively. She was a research fellow/K12 Scholar at the University of California, San Francisco, then joined the internal medicine faculty at Boston University School of Medicine where she was the recipient of a NIH/NIDA K23 award.
Since moving to UW in 2014, her research has been continuously funded by NIH and the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) in PI/co-I roles. She currently conducts clinical and health services research to improve care and outcomes for persons who use drugs, focusing on medications and innovative care delivery models to treat and prevent substance use disorders and related co-morbidities (hepatitis C and HIV). She takes an active role in training/mentoring as PI/Director of the NIDA R25 funded UW Medical Student Addiction Research (MedStAR) program, co-PI of the UW Training in Equity and Structural Solutions in Addictions (TESSA) T32 Program and co-Director of the UW/Fred Hutch CFAR Substance Use Scientific Working Group. in 2023 was the recipient of the Department of Medicine’s Gender Equity Award for Mentors.