Alka Kanaya, MD
Dr. Alka Kanaya is Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF in the Division of General Internal Medicine. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from the University of California, Davis in 1990 and an M.D. degree from UCSF in 1995. She completed her internship and residency training Internal Medicine at UCSF in 1998, and served as Chief Medical Resident at Moffitt-Long Hospital from 1998-1999. She trained in clinical epidemiology during a General Internal Medicine fellowship at UCSF, and started on the UCSF faculty in 2001.
Dr. Kanaya’s research focuses on type 2 diabetes disparities and diabetes and cardiovascular disease prevention. She has focused her research on Asian American health disparities over the past decade and has made seminal contributions in this area with her own South Asian longitudinal cohort study and with analyses of regional and national data disaggregating Asian American groups. She conceived of the Mediators of Atherosclerosis in South Asians Living in America (MASALA) Study to better understand factors driving the high risk factor prevalence among South Asians. She received a K23 award in 2006 to create a pilot cohort and then received an R01 grant in 2010 to enlarge this cohort to two geographic locations and follow the South Asians prospectively for disease outcomes. This cohort has shed light on why South Asians may have higher diabetes and atherosclerosis prevalence, both due to biologic factors (ectopic fat deposition, poor beta cell function, lower adiponectin levels, novel protein and metabolite biomarkers) and due to sociocultural factors (dietary patterns, traditional cultural beliefs). She has a K24 mentoring grant from the NHLBI to mentor and train junior investigators in cardiovascular epidemiology using the MASALA datasets.
Dr. Kanaya is the Human Metabolism Core Director for the UCSF Nutrition and Obesity Research Center which integrates basic, clinical, and behavioral scientists working in these fields. She has been a co-investigator for the UCSF CTSI since 2009 and the Director of the CTSI Training programs at UCSF since 2019. She is a standing member of the NIDDK DDK-8 study section.