Dr. José Alejandro Luchsinger-Stuart Appointed Director of the Irving Institute’s Community Engagement Core Resource

The Irving Institute appoints José A. Luchsinger-Stuart, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), as Director of the Community Engagement Core Resource (CECR), as of June 2016. In this role, Dr. Luchsinger-Stuart will work in partnership with the Irving Institute’s Executive Leadership and CECR Co-Directors, Drs. Rafael A. Lantigua and Ana F.I Abraído-Lanza as well as Associate Director, Dr. Elizabeth Cohn, to lead the community engagement efforts of a new five-year grant from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The Irving Institute received a $58.4 million grant from NCATS, the third and largest Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) bestowed to the Institute. Dr. Luchsinger will spearhead new education, training, community informatics, and recruitment programs to enhance the ability to engage broad community stakeholders in all phases of the translational research enterprise.

Dr. Luchsinger-Stuart has led a diverse portfolio of community-based participatory research (CBPR) and translational research including observational studies and clinical trials in diverse populations. He was the director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) P60 Center of Excellence in Minority Health and Health Disparities at CUMC from 2009 until 2016. The P60 center included CBPR projects in diabetes, hypertension, cognitive impairment, dementia caregiving, and housed centers of excellence in comparative effectiveness research and environmental health disparities. He conducted a bioethics project with members of the community and other CTSA collaborators (3P60MD000206-09S2) that demonstrated that members of the diverse community and of northern Manhattan and patients at CUMC welcome the use of stored biospecimens and their electronic medical records for research, in support of methods proposed for research in personalized medicine. A current award from the National Institute on Aging (RF1AG051556) is part of a national consortium that seeks to elucidate the mechanisms of the vascular contributions to Alzheimer’s disease using genomics, metabolomics, proteomics, lipidomics and ascertainment of Alzheimer’s disease neuropathology in-vivo in middle age members of the community of northern Manhattan. Dr. Luchsinger has also worked with community based organizations and community members to design studies that address their priorities, which have resulted in funding from NIMHD (P60 MD000206-08S1), Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (grant 7160), and National Institute of Nursing Research (1R01NR014430). Community based organizations are funded collaborators on these projects.

In addition to his research, he is also the vice chair of the executive board of ARC XVI Ft. Washington, a major community based organization in northern Manhattan. He was the recipient of a community service award from a local community based organization (Riverstone) in 2014. Lastly, he is a practicing bilingual (Spanish, English) physician in the community of northern Manhattan. Dr. Luchsinger-Stuart is passionate about planning and conducting translational research in collaboration with the community of upper Manhattan.