Urmimala Sarkar, MD

Urmimala Sarkar, MD, MPH

Professor of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine, UCSF; Associate Chair for Faculty Experience, Department of Medicine, UCSF; Associate Director, UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations

Cancer Center Program Membership

Cancer Control

[email protected]

Box 1364, UCSF
San Francisco, CA 94143-1364

UCSF Profiles

Lab Site

Research Summary

Urmimala Sarkar MD, MPH is Professor of Medicine at UCSF in the Division of General Internal Medicine, Associate Chair for Faculty Experience for the Department of Medicine, Associate Director of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations, and a primary care physician at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital’s Richard H. Fine People's Clinic. Her work centers on innovating for health equity and improving safety and quality of outpatient care for everyone, especially low-income and diverse populations. Her research employs new tools like digital / mobile health and social media platforms to improve the safety and quality of outpatient care. Her expertise spans topics including medical errors and patient safety, diabetes, and cancer prevention and survivorship. Dr. Sarkar's research is collaborative and intersects with methods found in human centered design, human factors engineering, data science, health services research, and implementation science. As a leader and mentor, Dr. Sarkar is committed to training the next generation of health equity researchers and leaders. She is the director of UCSF's Primary Care Research Fellowship, co-directs the Learning Health Systems Early Career Acceleration Program (LEAP K12) for junior faculty, and serves as the curricular director for UCSF's Fellowship Advancement and Skills Training in Clinical Research (FASTCaR). Learn more at https://sarkarlab.ucsf.edu

Research Funding

  • June 10, 2019 - May 31, 2024 - Cancer Registry for Understanding and Improving Survivorship Experiences (CRUISE) , Principal Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: R01CA241128
  • September 30, 2018 - September 29, 2023 - UCSF Learning Health System K12 Career Development Program , Co-Principal Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: K12HS026383
  • September 5, 2018 - August 31, 2022 - Creating Community Driven, Personalized Health Maps for Patients with Diabetes , Co-Principal Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: R01LM013045
  • July 1, 2017 - June 30, 2022 - Improving Survivorship Care for Diverse Cancer Patients Cared for in Safety-net Settings , Principal Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: K24CA212294
  • September 30, 2014 - September 29, 2020 - Building an Ambulatory Patient Safety Learning Laboratory for Diverse Populations , Principal Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: P30HS023558
  • September 30, 2015 - July 31, 2020 - Investigating Failures of Notification and Monitoring in Outpatient Care: the Safety Promotion Action Research and Knowledge (SPARK) Network , Principal Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: R01HS024426
  • September 22, 2014 - August 31, 2018 - Influencing cervical cancer prevention and detection online through social media , Principal Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: R01CA178875
  • April 1, 2013 - January 31, 2017 - California Safety Net Institute Innovation and Dissemination Network , Principal Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: R24HS022047
  • September 30, 2012 - September 29, 2015 - Measuring and Improving Ambulatory Patient Safety with an Electronic Dashboard , Principal Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: R21HS021322
  • September 30, 2008 - September 29, 2013 - Interactive HIT to Promote Ambulatory Safety among Vulnerable Diabetes Patients , Principal Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: K08HS017594

Education

Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, B.S., 06/96, Biology
University of California, San Diego, M.D., 06/02
University of California, Berkeley, M.P.H., 06/00, Epidemiology
University of California, San Francisco, Intern, 06/03, Medicine
University of California, San Francisco, Resident, 06/05, Medicine
University of California, San Francisco, Fellow, 06/08, Medicine

Honors & Awards

  • 2019
    UCSF ZSFG Department of Medicine Mentoring Award
  • 2016-2017
    Pathways to Discovery Mentor Award
  • 2010
    Hamolsky finalist for Abstract, Society of General Internal Medicine
  • 2007
    Lipkin Finalist for Abstract, Society of General Internal Medicine
  • 2005
    Lipkin Finalist for Abstract, Society of General Internal Medicine
  • 1998
    U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Public Health Scholarship
  • 1997
    Howard Hughes Medical Institute Student Grant Award
  • 1997
    Howard Hughes Medical Institute Student Grant Award
  • 1996
    Ruth Headley Memorial Humanities Award Stanford University
  • 1995
    Cap and Gown Honor Society Stanford University
  • 1992
    David Starr Jordan Scholar Stanford University

Selected Publications

  1. Khoong EC, Wong J, Garcia F, Olazo K, Miles M, Zeng B, Lyles CR, Sarkar U. Factors impacting electronic patient-generated data use in safety-net systems: a qualitative study. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2025 May 28.  View on PubMed
  2. Araiye Medlock, Courtney Lyles, Urmimala Sarkar, Melissa Gosdin, Anjana Sharma, Jaime Orozco. 323 Co-designing a health technology intervention through patient-centered collaboration within a large randomized controlled trial: A community-informed approach. Journal of Clinical and Translational Science. 2025 Apr 11; 9(s1):99-100.  View on PubMed
  3. Lyles CR, Khoong EC, Stern RJ, Abtahi N, Sharma AE, Pletcher MJ, Xia F, Garcia F, Shah ND, Tieu L, Sarkar U, CHARMED consortium. Championing Hypertension Remote Monitoring for Equity and Dissemination (CHARMED): A multi-site factorial randomized controlled trial protocol. Contemp Clin Trials. 2025 May; 152:107879.  View on PubMed
  4. Gandhi T, Sarkar U. Patient Engagement in Safety: Are We There Yet? Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2025 Mar 01.  View on PubMed
  5. Wang K, Wong J, Avilez L, Olazo K, Olanrewaju S, McCulloch CE, Pasick R, Patel S, Somsouk M, Sarkar U. Multilevel intervention for follow-up of abnormal FIT in the safety-net: IMProving Adherence to Colonoscopy through Teams and Technology (IMPACTT). Contemp Clin Trials. 2025 Mar; 150:107810.  View on PubMed
  6. Tisdale RL, Sarkar U. Learning Health Systems Research: Continued Progress and Ongoing Challenges. Med Care. 2025 May 01; 63(5):331-333.  View on PubMed
  7. Dixit N, Avilez L, Honcharov V, Knopf K, Bedi T, Nekhlyudov L, Sarkar U. Group medical visits in cancer survivorship care: a scoping review. J Cancer Surviv. 2024 Nov 18.  View on PubMed
  8. Omomukuyo A, Ramirez A, Davis A, Velasquez A, Najmabadi AL, Kong M, Willard-Grace R, Brown W, Broderick A, Suomala K, McCulloch CE, Franco N, Sarkar U, Lyles C, Tran AS, Sharma AE, Tuot DS. Achieving Chronic Care Equity by Leveraging the Telehealth Ecosystem (ACCTIVATE): A Multilevel Randomized Controlled Trial Protocol. Med Res Arch. 2024 Nov; 12(11).  View on PubMed
  9. Arévalo Avalos MR, Patel A, Duru H, Shah S, Rivera M, Sorrentino E, Dy M, Sarkar U, Nguyen KH, Lyles CR, Aguilera A. Implementation of a Technology-Enabled Diabetes Self-Management Peer Coaching Intervention for Patients With Poorly Controlled Diabetes: Quasi-Experimental Case Study. JMIR Diabetes. 2024 Oct 15; 9:e54370.  View on PubMed
  10. Aguilera A, Arévalo Avalos M, Xu J, Chakraborty B, Figueroa C, Garcia F, Rosales K, Hernandez-Ramos R, Karr C, Williams J, Ochoa-Frongia L, Sarkar U, Yom-Tov E, Lyles C. Effectiveness of a Digital Health Intervention Leveraging Reinforcement Learning: Results From the Diabetes and Mental Health Adaptive Notification Tracking and Evaluation (DIAMANTE) Randomized Clinical Trial. J Med Internet Res. 2024 Oct 08; 26:e60834.  View on PubMed
  11. Rotenstein L, Wong J, Schmidt S, LaVine N, Oyler J, Sarkar U. The Organization of Academic General Internal Medicine Practice at the Top Primary Care Schools. J Gen Intern Med. 2025 Apr; 40(5):985-995.  View on PubMed
  12. Aly M. Cortella, Katarina Wang, Debby Oh, Niharika Dixit, Zinnia Loya, Kathie Lau, Michelle Wadhwa, Chris Duffy, Salma Shariff-Marco, Kristan Olazo, Vlad Honcharov, Marika Dy, Urmimala Sarkar, Scarlett Lin Gomez. Abstract C034: Impact of survivorship care plans on self-reported health and functional well-being. Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention. 2024 Sep 21; 33(9_Supplement):c034-c034.  View on PubMed
  13. Kiran Gupta, Vincent Romero, Véronique Grenon, Urmimala Sarkar. Malpractice rates are lower for women physicians compared to men physicians. Journal of Patient Safety and Risk Management. 2024 Sep 10.  View on PubMed
  14. Deiner MS, Honcharov V, Li J, Mackey TK, Porco TC, Sarkar U. Large Language Models Can Enable Inductive Thematic Analysis of a Social Media Corpus in a Single Prompt: Human Validation Study. JMIR Infodemiology. 2024 Aug 29; 4:e59641.  View on PubMed
  15. Lyles C, Berrean B, Buenaventura A, Milter S, Hernandez DD, Sarkar U, Gutierrez C, Palmer N, Brown Iii W. Building a Client Resource and Communication Platform for Community-Based Organizations to Address Health and Social Needs: Co-Design Study. JMIR Hum Factors. 2024 Aug 16; 11:e53939.  View on PubMed
  16. Sarkar U, Bates DW. Proactively Designing Generative Artificial Intelligence for Primary Care-Reply. JAMA Intern Med. 2024 Aug 01; 184(8):992.  View on PubMed
  17. Sharma AE, Tran AS, Dy M, Najmabadi AL, Olazo K, Huang B, Sarkar U, PARTNRS Study Stakeholder Advisory Research Council. Patient and caregiver perspectives on causes and prevention of ambulatory adverse events: multilingual qualitative study. BMJ Qual Saf. 2024 Jul 11.  View on PubMed
  18. Chu JN, Wong J, Bardach NS, Allen IE, Barr-Walker J, Sierra M, Sarkar U, Khoong EC. Association between language discordance and unplanned hospital readmissions or emergency department revisits: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ Qual Saf. 2024 Jun 19; 33(7):456-469.  View on PubMed
  19. Sarkar U. The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: Understanding the Safety of Outpatient Care. Ann Intern Med. 2024 06; 177(6):824-825.  View on PubMed
  20. Samuel Olanrewaju, Rena Mei, Shreya Patel, Urmimala Sarkar, Ma Somsouk. Mo1008 CLINIC VARIATIONS IN COLONOSCOPY PROCESS MEASURES AFTER A POSITIVE STOOL TEST: A RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS WITHIN AN INTEGRATED SAFETY-NET HEALTH SYSTEM. Gastroenterology. 2024 May 1; 166(5):s-911.  View on PubMed

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