Third Meeting of the DS-I Africa Consortium
3 November - 9 November 2023

Dr Sabrinah Christie - Participant

Harnessing Data Science to Promote Equity in Injury and Surgery for Africa (D-SINE) (Other significant personnel)

I am an assistant professor of trauma, acute care surgery, and critical care at the University of California, Los Angeles and a faculty member at the UCLA Program for the Advancement of Surgical Equity. In my academic practice I am a federally-funded global surgery researcher focused on the data-driven development, context-appropriate implementation and rigorous validation of strategies to build scalable, sustainable and evidenced-based care systems in sub-Saharan Africa. I have a longstanding passion for understanding the interplay between health systems and outcomes in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). My first exposure to global health occurred through participation in preventative medicine and public health projects in Montero, Bolivia and Bagamoyo, Tanzania during my undergraduate training. As the recipient of a Thomas J Watson Fellowship I spent a year researching paradigms underlying body modification, gaining first-hand experience with research implementation in LMIC. While abroad, I witnessed several severe multi-casualty road traffic injuries and became aware of the overwhelming burden of injury among LMIC populations, leading me to select a clinical career in trauma surgery with a research focus on global injury. To propel my research development, I worked under the mentorship of Dr. Jonathan Zenilman at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Dr. Mitchell Cohen at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) gaining experience with large clinical databases and conducting rigorous experimental design for clinical, patient-centered research in injured populations.          Expanding on these formative experiences, I spent three dedicated research years while a General Surgery resident at the UCSF gaining experience in the practical application of these techniques toward building trauma systems and research capacity in SSA. Since 2015, I have worked under the mentorship of Drs. Catherine Juillard (primary mentor) and Dr. Alain Chichom (LMIC mentor) on projects to implement trauma surveillance and quality improvement systems in Cameroon.  Focus areas included iterative strengthening of the Cameroon national trauma registry (CTR) and pilot testing of quality improvement training for trauma stakeholders. These preliminary efforts led to several peer reviewed publications , a National Trauma Quality Improvement initiative (R21TW010453, MPIs Juillard, Chichom) and a formal trauma death review identifying key targets for trauma process improvement. In 2022, this work received the Earl G. Young Prize for Clinical research from the Western Trauma Association with publication in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. Guided by my mentors, I gained on-the ground experience leading an epidemiological surveillance mixed-methods population study on injury and care access in Cameroon. Our findings were presented at the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma and ultimately resulted in nine peer-reviewed publications including a primary publication in JAMA Network Open. Through this project, I gained experience presenting summary findings to the Ministry of Public Health in Cameroon (MOPH) and mentoring seven Cameroonian medical students from project development through peer reviewed publication.          Through my trauma fellowship and early faculty appointment I have progressively focused on development and validation of emerging technologies and translatable strategies to address LMIC challenges. Building upon domestic work with Mitch Cohen and Alan Hubbard at the University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley) we validated use of a machine learning algorithm to provide injury severity estimation across high-income and LMIC contexts. With Dr. Juillard as my senior mentor, I received a grant from the Association for Academic Surgery to pilot a telephone triage tool to identify injured patients needing medical care after hospital discharge in Cameroon. This pilot was used to develop a larger, R21 funded validation study (R21TW010956, MPIs Juillard, Chichom). I will presented the summary results of this multi-center implementation study at the Western Trauma Association in March 2023 with plans to scale to 10 centers (U54TW012087, MPIs Juillard, Chichom, Hubbard, Nguefack-Tsague).          As an Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery at UCLA, I am responsible for the surgical care of patients with injuries and critical surgical illness. I oversee the training of medical students, residents, and fellows ensuring that my research is grounded in a foundation of evidenced-based surgical care.  In my role as faculty for the UCLA Program for the Advancement of Surgical Equity (PASE) I collaborate with domestic and international partners, including Drs. Juillard and Chichom to design, conduct and review research to improve surgical care among diverse populations. This academic environment has ongoing collaborations through the Data Science Center for Surgery, Injury, and Equity in Africa (D-SINE Africa), UC Berkeley, UCSF and University of Cape Town (UCT) and is uniquely positioned to leverage multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional expertise and resources towards LMIC capacity building and project implementation. I was recently awarded a R21 (R21TW012609-01, MPIs Juillard, Chichom) entitles "Smartphone Ultrasonography to Improve Diagnosis and Treatment of Life-Threatening Injuries for Trauma Patients in Cameroon."