Harold S. Luft Mentoring Award
Harold (Hal) Luft, PhD, joined the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies and UCSF in 1978. As the Institute's second director, Dr. Luft contributed to and exemplified the Institute’s legacy of leadership and service.
The Harold S. Luft Award for Mentoring in Health Services and Health Policy Research is sponsored by the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF. The award recognizes UCSF faculty who are engaged in health services and/or health policy research, provide mentoring in these areas, and in their mentoring roles demonstrate the qualities exemplified by Dr. Luft.
"She is a tireless advocate for the careers of others, and I have personally benefited from numerous opportunities made possible through her support. Her mentorship has not only shaped my career but also reinforced my commitment to advancing health policy and supporting others."
"While her individual relationships are a great strength, Jinoos’s best superpower may lie in her ability to build communities and resources that benefit other researchers – in many ways, Jinoos has laid the foundation for an entire generation of health services researchers in our field." - nominating letters
Dr. Jinoos Yazdany is a rheumatologist at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Professor of Medicine at UCSF, where she serves as Chief of the Division of Rheumatology. Throughout her career, she has focused on a central question: how to improve care for patients with chronic disease. Her work brings together health services research, informatics, and implementation science to better understand what drives high-quality care in real-world settings.
Clinically, she specializes in systemic lupus and co-directs the UCSF Health Lupus Clinic. Her research has included the development and use of tools such as clinical registries and quality measures, as well as more recent work evaluating artificial intelligence to improve patient outcomes, safety, and equity. She leads the Impact Monitoring Platform for AI in Clinical Care (IMPACC), an initiative aimed at understanding how AI tools perform in practice and how they affect patients.
Dr. Yazdany has contributed to national efforts to improve quality in rheumatology, including helping to build the American College of Rheumatology’s RISE registry and advancing federal quality measures. Her work has been supported by NIH/NIAMS, AHRQ, and the CDC, and she holds a NIAMS K24 award focused on mentorship. She also co-directs the UCSF Rheumatology Quality and Informatics Lab and a research core within the UCSF PREMIER Center that supports clinical research and informatics.
She is deeply committed to mentoring trainees and early-career investigators, and to fostering a community focused on improving care for patients.
Previous Winners
2025: Louise Walters, MD, Helen Hoh Wu and Laurene Wu McClain Professor in Geriatrics, UCSF, School of Medicine
2024: Christina Mangurian, MD, MAS, Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs in the UCSF School of Medicine and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Lynne and Marc Benioff Endowed Chair in Psychiatry
2023: Renee Hsia, MD, MSc, Professor of Medicine and Health Policy, UCSF, Department of Emergency Medicine, Associate Chair of Health Services Research in the Department of Emergency Medicine.
2022: Urmimala Sarkar, MD, MPH, Professor of Medicine, UCSF, Division of General Internal Medicine, Associate Director, UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations
2021: Pamela Ling, MD, Professor of Medicine and Director, Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, UCSF
2020: Mary Whooley, MD Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology & Biostatistics, and Director of the Center for Healthcare Improvement and Medical Effectiveness (CHIME) at the San Francisco VA and UCSF
2019: Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, PhD, MD, MAS Professor and Vice Dean for Population Health and Health Equity, UCSF School of Medicine
2018: Margot Kushel, MD Professor and Director of UCSF's Center for Vulnerable Populations
2017: Mary-Margaret (Meg) Chren, MD, Professor, Department of Dermatology at UCSF
2016: Andrew Bindman, MD, Professor, Medicine, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, UCSF School of Medicine
2016: Dean Schillinger, MD, Professor of Medicine and Chief of the UCSF Division of General Internal Medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital
2015: Ken Covinsky, MD, Clinician-Researcher, Division of Geriatrics, UCSF School of Medicine
2014: Wendy Max, PhD, Professor and Director, Institute for Health & Aging, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, UCSF School of Nursing
2013: Edward H. Yelin, PhD, Professor, UCSF Department of Medicine’s Division of Rheumatology and the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies
2011: Ruth E. Malone, PhD, MS, RN, Professor and Chair, Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences, UCSF School of Nursing
2010: Michael D. Cabana, MD, MPH, Professor and Director, Division of General Pediatrics, UCSF School of Medicine
2009: Lisa A. Bero, PhD, Professor and Vice Chair for Research, Department of Clinical Pharmacy, UCSF School of Pharmacy (currently Professor in Pharmacy and the Charles Perkins Center at the University of Sydney, Australia)
Nominations will open in January, 2027 for the 2027 award.
Health services and health policy research covers a range of topics, including how social factors, financing processes, health technologies, laws and regulations, and personal behaviors, among other factors, affect access to health care, the quality and cost of health care, and ultimately, our health and well-being. The main goals of this research are to identify the most effective ways to organize, finance, and deliver high-quality care; reduce medical errors; and improve patient safety.
Eligibility
UCSF senior faculty, at Associate or Full Professor rank, with research/teaching interests in health policy and/or health services research (HP/HSR). Nomination letters should demonstrate that nominees have made significant or sustained impact on the professional development of individuals they have mentored. Nominations are welcome for all individuals who meet academic, professional, and interest criteria. The Award Committee does not use race, gender, sex, or other protected categories or proxies for protected categories in the selection process.
Criteria
- Inspire and stimulate mentees to do their best and most creative work in HP/HSR.
- Expand mentees’ ways of thinking by fostering appreciation of different points of view.
- Develop career opportunities for mentees.
- Create communities of learners and maintain life-long contact with mentees.
- Serve as a role model in leadership, professionalism, integrity and life balance that goes beyond the scope of their individual job responsibilities.
Nominator must be a current or past mentee of nominee and be involved in health policy and/or health services research.
Nominations
Nomination should include one primary and two supporting letters (no longer than 2 pages each) describing how the nominee meets the above criteria. Specific, but brief examples or anecdotes are helpful. Please include the nominee's recent CV with a list of the nominee’s mentees (noting, if possible, their current positions).
Please address letters to the Luft Award Selection Committee and send via email, to Joanne Spetz, PhD and Audrey Durazzo (joanne.spetz@ucsf.edu; audrey.durazzor@ucsf.edu).
Award Selection Committee includes representatives from the four UCSF schools.
Award – a framed certificate will be presented to the award recipient. The individual's name will appear on a permanent plaque at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, and the individual’s profile will be posted on the Institute’s website.
About Hal Luft
Harold (Hal) Luft, PhD, joined the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies and UCSF in 1978 after five years at Stanford University as a faculty member and Associate Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program. He became Associate Director of the Institute in 1986, became Acting Director in 1993, and was named Director in 1995. Since its inception in 1972, the Institute has been extremely fortunate to have leaders with broad vision, exceptional standards of excellence, and clarity of purpose. As the Institute's second director, Dr. Luft contributed to and exemplified the Institute’s legacy of leadership and service.
That legacy includes the training and mentoring of future health services research and health policy leaders. Dr. Luft often refers to himself as a 40+ years' postdoc because he has been involved in teaching and mentoring graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and interns for more than 30 years and has also advised junior faculty. He himself has been an exemplary teacher, mentor, and role model, and under Dr. Luft's directorship, the Institute, which is an organized research unit, continued and enhanced its leadership role in interdisciplinary training.
Dr. Luft was named Director of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute (PAMFRI) in July 2008, but he maintains an Emeritus Professor title at UCSF. He continues his dedication to training future leaders in health services research and health policy, and he continues to serve as a mentor to postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty.