University of Rochester Medical Center
University of Rochester Medical Center Home

Primary Mentors

PRIMARY MENTORS are drawn from a pool of mid-career to senior-level independent investigators with a history of securing external funding in mood disorders, comorbid mood and medical disorders, psychosocial aspects of aging, health disparities, the biology of stress, or the biology of aging.

Robert Ader, PhD,is currently implementing an innovative study designed to apply conditioning principles to the design of regimens of drug therapy. It has major clinical implications with respect to the treatment of autoimmune and other chronic conditions, as the therapeutic effect of partial schedules of pharmacologic reinforcement could decrease the amount of drug required to reduce symptoms of disease. Given the high degree of physical comorbidity seen in depressed African Americans and Latinos, it is likely that trainees will be eager to work with Dr. Ader on this significant line of research.

Yeates Conwell, MD, has received R24 funding for an exciting collaboration with regional community-based elder services providers to establish the Senior Health and Research (SHARE) Alliance, a ‘town-gown’ partnership that will lead to high quality research on the impact of social service delivery on the well-being of community-dwelling older adults. Consistent with the basic premise of this R25, the SHARE premise is that community-based services offer an important avenue for mounting preventive interventions that would not be possible through more “traditional” health care delivery systems.

Paul Duberstein, PhD, is an Investigator of the Rochester Center for Mind Body Research (RCMBR; J. Moynihan, PhD, PI;), a 3-year Center grant, that focuses on relationships between stress, depression, and immune function in subjects receiving vaccines and those at risk for the development of, or with diagnosed with, cardiovascular disease or autoimmune diseases. The RCMBR and the R25 have one important theme in common: the need for more and better research on the bidirectional relationships between depression and physical health among ethnic minorities. Although studies conducted in tightly controlled laboratory settings or specialty clinics employing strict inclusion and exclusion criteria have established the scientific feasibility of the basic assumptions underlying these bi-directional relations, questions remain about population generalizability and ecological validity. In particular, patients at greatest risk for chronic diseases of aging—the socioeconomically disadvantaged -- have been under-represented in much of the research. PRIDE trainees will be given the opportunity to take advantage of the RCMBR infrastructure including core resources and seed grant funding. 

Ronald Epstein, MD, heads the Rochester Center to Improve Communication in Health Care, the long-term goal of which is to reduce disparities and inequality in health and health care. Dr. Epstein’s studies have shown that patient-physician communication improves outcomes of chronic disease, mental health, health care costs, disparities in health care, and patient satisfaction.  Dr. Epstein and his colleagues in the Patient-Centered Care (PCC) study demonstrated that physicians who are more patient-centered generate lower health care costs while maintaining or exceeding quality of care measures for physicians who are less patient-centered. 

 Kevin Fiscella, MD, MPH, has three currently funded R01s. One focuses on the impact of HMOs on disparities in health care and indirectly examines the extent to which practice guidelines influence physician behavior as they pertain to differential treatment of minorities. Another addressed the question of whether the biases in reporting of receipt of preventive health services differ by race, ethnicity or social class.  Dr. Fiscella has theorized that “stereotype threat” or social pressure to defy racial stereotypes may cause African Americans to over-report receipt of these services to a greater extent than whites.  His training in public health and his daily activities as a practicing primary care physician makes him an excellent role model for aspiring clinical scientists.

Jeffrey Lyness, MD, has recently been named the Associate Chair for Education in the Department of Psychiatry. He is currently PI on an R01 investigating prospectively the outcomes of minor and subsyndromal depressions in older primary care patients. As a K24-funded geriatric psychiatrist who has examined relations between physical comorbidity and depression in patients seen outside of the mental health care delivery system, Dr. Lyness is an ideal mentor and role model for this R25.

Jan Moynihan, PhD, is the Associate Chair for Research in the Department of Psychiatry.  In this capacity, she also serves as the Director of the Rochester Center for Mind-Body Research, and has successfully helped researchers in Psychiatry forge collaborations with basic and applied scientists throughout the University of Rochester. She has a track record of conducting high quality research on stress, neuroendocrine responses, cytokine responses and immune effector mechanisms. 

Robert Q. Pollard, PhD, founded and heads the Department of Psychiatry’s Deaf Wellness Center and he is associate director of the National Center on Deaf Health Research, a CDC-funded prevention research center. He is interested in addressing health and mental health care disparities, assessment and treatment procedures, and cross-cultural research ethics and methodologies pertaining to the deaf population.