Professor, Family & Preventive Medicine and the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center
Overview:
My academic career interest is the design of team-based, collaborative science infrastructures that generate impactful knowledge through clinical trials and other discovery research. My overall goal is to develop dynamic and adaptive systems to conduct clinical trials with diverse communities for the maintenance of disability-free survival.
I am also the Rush site principal investigator for the Chicago Area Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Network (CAPriCORN), a consortium of academic health systems and other partners working to develop, test and implement strategies to improve care for diverse residents in the Chicago region to improve health care quality, health outcomes and health equity. I am the Rush site principal investigator for the All of Us Research Program of the NIH’s Precision Medicine Initiative. I also am an Associate Director of the Institute for Translational Medicine (ITM) as Cluster Leader for the Network Capacity Cluster. In this NIH funded CTSA program, I oversee the work to streamline clinical research startup and achieve more rapid recruitment at multiple ITM academic institutions. I was a member of the Rush Institutional Review Board for almost 15 years and has served on various other research-focused committees and leadership roles at Rush including the Assistant Vice-Provost, Clinical Research, Rush University.
I have been the overall principal investigator for two investigator initiated clinical trials and one SBIR clinical trial. I am on the international steering committee investigator for the recently completed ASPirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly (ASPREE now ASPREE-XT) clinical trial and for the recently funded PRagmatic EValuation of evENTs And Benefits of Lipid-lowering in oldEr adults (PREVENTABLE) clinical trial. I have been the Rush site principal investigator for federally sponsored, foundation sponsored, and industry sponsored Alzheimer’s disease related (over 25) and other common age-related conditions such as COVID-19 along with being a Rush sub-investigator on many other clinical trials.
My research manuscripts focus on non-neurological, modifiable factors associated with disability-free longevity in aging, novel clinical trial design and implementation, and health equity. I also was an editor of the book Community Health Equity: A Chicago Reader published by the University of Chicago Press in 2019.
I also have provided support for ongoing longitudinal research and infrastructure projects on memory and aging, including the Chicago Health and Aging Project, the Rush Memory and Aging Project, the Rush Religious Orders Study, the Rush Minority Aging and Research Study, the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Core Center, the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Assistance Center, the Rush Center of Excellence on Disparities in HIV and Aging, and the Rush Memory Clinic Data and Specimen Repository.
I have led education, community engagement and recruitment efforts of the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center, especially in communities under-represented in aging research. I am the co-Director of the Center for Community Health Equity, an initiative jointly led by Rush University Medical Center and DePaul University designed to reduce hardship and improve health outcomes in Chicago. I also have provided mentorship to diverse students interested in the health sciences at the high school, college, graduate and post-graduate levels, especially through two well-established summer internship program he co-designed with other faculty. I have been an Executive Committee member of the Rush Mentoring Program and have served as a thesis advisor in the Master of Science in Clinical Research of The Graduate College. I have served as faculty on federally funded institutional (T32) training grants and have been a co-mentor and/or advisor on federally funded career development (K series) grants. He has developed and taught curriculum for the Family Medicine Leadership Program and the Master of Science in Clinical Research at Rush.
Education:
BS, Northwestern University – Evanston, Illinois (Chemical Engineering)
MD, University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine – Chicago, Illinois (Medicine)
Residency, West Suburban Hospital & Medical Center – Oak Park, Illinois (Family Medicine)
Fellowship, Rush University Medical Center – Chicago, Illinois (Geriatric Medicine)
My ORCID is 0000-0001-9706-9730.
My Scopus ID is 10046255700.
My NIH COMMONS name is rshah1