MD – Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA
Residency – Internal Medicine, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA

Biography: Dr. Sae Takada, internal medicine physician, is interested in examining how health beliefs and behaviors are propagated through interpersonal relationships.  She plans to use her interdisciplinary training to integrate quantitative methods with anthropological and historical perspectives to generate a complex understanding of social relationships and health.  In her career, Dr. Takada is a primary care physician specializing in the care of HIV-positive patients while designing interventions on community factors that influence health beliefs and behaviors.   

Dr. Takada worked with her mentors including Drs. Billy Cunningham, Steve Shoptaw, Pamina Gorbach, and Arleen Lebowitz on a community project entitled, “Delivery research results on vulnerable populations to the community.” She also partnered with Dr. Leonard Moore, an alumnus of the RWJ Clinical Scholars Program at UCLA who is currently Associate Director in the Division of HIV and STI at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.  The goal of this project was to take the results of secondary data analyses from mStudy and LINKLA studies examining stigma and social capital, and disseminate them to appropriate community organizations and agencies who can turn findings into interventions to ultimately improve people’s engagement in their care.   

In addition, Dr. Takada collaborated with this mentor team on her main project entitled, “Life chaos is associated with HIV testing, engagement in care, and antiretroviral adherence upon entry into jail.”  In this project, she used interviews conducted over three years with adult cis-men and transgender women living with HIV in jail to examine the association of life chaos (using the Confusion, Hubbub, and Order Scale (CHAOS)) with engagement in care and antiretroviral adherence prior to incarceration, and viral suppression upon incarceration.  Report manuscript has been completed.  

Dr. Takada was involved in a number of other projects.  She collaborated on a project entitled, “Critical review of health-related stigma” with mentors Drs. Allan Brandt and Arthur Kleinman.  Dr. Takada also worked with Drs. Paul Krezanoski, Akihiro Nishi, and Viola Nyakata among others on two projects: 1)“Malaria bednet use and social networks in rural Uganda,” the findings were published in the Malaria Journal in 2019 and 2) “HIV-related stigma and social networks in rural Uganda,” the findings were published in Social Science & Medicine in 2019.   

In addition to research projects, Dr. Takada has guest lectured on the topic of stigma for UCLA psychiatry residents and for a UCLA undergraduate course on global health in 2018.  She gave a podium presentation at the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) Annual Meeting, 2019 on “Social network analysis of firearm sharing among US states.”  She also has engaged in mentoring undergraduate students and research assistants; published 6 peer reviewed research papers and had several more manuscripts in submission at the end of her fellowship.    

Dr. Takada applied for and was awarded a K award in her second year of fellowship.  Her project examined the implementation of screening for social determinants of health at UCLA in partnership with the Department of Medicine Quality Team, the Faculty Practice Group’s Population Health Team, and the ISS group.  Dr. Takada plans to continue research on health beliefs, community engagement, and social support topics related to HIV and global health.  She is currently appointed as an Assistant Professor at UCLA in the department of Medicine division of General Internal Medicine / Health Services Research.