Faculty and Administration

Dr. Brennan Spiegel is the Director of Health Services Research for Cedars-Sinai Health System and Director of the Cedars-Sinai Master's Degree Program in Health Delivery Science. Dr. Spiegel directs a multidisciplinary team that investigates how digital health technologies, including wearable biosensors, smartphone applications, virtual reality, and social media, can improve people's lives. His team developed the largest and most widely-documented medical virtual reality program in the world at Cedars-Sinai. Dr. Spiegel has published numerous best-selling medical textbooks, editorials, and more than 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals. He is listed in the "Top 100 Influencer"lists for digital health and virtual reality. His digital health research has been featured by major media outlets, including Bloomberg, CBS News, Forbes, Huffington Post, LA Times, NBC News, Reuters, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. His virtual reality research won the 2017 "Webby Award"for best technology on the internet. Dr. Spiegel's research team receives funding from the NIH, PCORI, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Hearst Foundation, Veterans Administration, State of California precision medicine program, and industry sources. Dr. Spiegel is Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Gastroenterology—the leading clinical gastroenterology journal in North America.

Christopher V. Almario, MD, MSHPM, is an assistant professor in residence of Medicine and a health services research scientist in the divisions of Digestive and Liver Diseases and Health Services Research at Cedars-Sinai. He earned his MD at Jefferson Medical College and then completed his internal medicine and gastroenterology training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and UCLA, respectively. While at UCLA, he also earned his MS in health policy and management through the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Almario's research is focused on developing innovative, scalable, evidence-based technologies that support patients and clinicians in making shared decisions that improve health and reduce costs. He has been published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, and International Journal of Medical Informatics, among others. Almario has also received funding from the National Institutes of Health, American College of Gastroenterology, American Gastroenterological Association, Crohn's & Colitis Foundation, and multiple industry partners.

Gillian Gresham is a research scientist at the Research Center of Health Equity and acting assistant professor of hematology/oncology in the Department of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai. She received her PhD in epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in the Clinical Trials and Evidence Synthesis track. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in cancer clinical trials in the Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Core at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and was a visiting scholar at the Center for Clinical Investigation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in 2019. She has a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry and Master of Science in epidemiology from the University of Ottawa, Canada. Her research interests lie at the intersection of cancer outcomes research, emerging technologies in healthcare, and patient reported outcomes. She is currently the principal investigator of a prospective study evaluating the use of wearable activity monitors (Fitbits) to monitor and predict functional outcomes in advanced cancer patients (DigiSTEPS) and is co-investigator for other ongoing lifestyle and dietary intervention studies in cancer survivors at Cedars-Sinai. Her methodologic interests include the analysis and reporting of toxicity data in cancer clinical trials and the incorporation of patient reported outcomes into systematic reviews and meta-analyses. She has teaching experience in topics including epidemiology, clinical trials, systematic reviews and meta-analysis, and data management.

Jan Michael Ballesteros has a PhD in Sociology from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. With a background in racial health disparities and social class inequities, his studies have focused on structural racism and its cascading effects on the quality of life, health and opportunities towards social mobility. His most recent study is on the mental wellbeing of Asian Americans due to the costly effects that the pervasive perception of the model minority myth can have. Dr. Ballesteros currently works as a project scientist for the Cedars-Sinai Center for Outcomes Research and Education (CS-CORE) and is a course co-director for the capstone project for the Cedars-Sinai Master’s Degree Program in Health Delivery Science (MHDS). As a project scientist, he helps support and coordinate with other researchers as well as design studies and analyze data using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. As a course co-director, Dr. Ballesteros provides mentorship to students in their research projects as they plan, develop and implement their projects.

His research involves emergency medicine, health policy, quality and safety of healthcare in vulnerable populations of patients. He has published peer-reviewed articles evaluating how Medicare payment policies influence physician practices, including how pay-for-performance programs have led practices to adopt electronic health record systems and implement procedures to measure healthcare quality. Additionally, he has sought to improve quality and safety of emergency care through evaluation of imaging use in emergency departments and through tracking patients’ health outcomes after discharge from the emergency department.

Berdahl is board-certified in emergency medicine and clinical informatics, and he is currently appointed assistant professor at Cedars-Sinai with additional appointments as health sciences assistant clinical professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and physician policy researcher at the RAND Corporation.

Berdahl received his bachelor of arts degree in music performance from UCLA, then earned his doctor of medicine degree from the Yale University School of Medicine. He completed his internship and emergency medicine residency at Los Angeles County + USC Medical Center, then completed the National Clinician Scholars Program at UCLA, where he additionally obtained a master of science degree in health policy and management with a concentration in implementation and improvement science.

Laurel (Barosh) Finster is health disparities researcher with a history of working with priority populations across the globe. She received an MPH from the Graduate School of Public Health at San Diego State University, completed a Global Health Fellowship in health policy from the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, and received a BA in social ecology from UC Irvine. Her early career was focused on global health research and she participated in projects in Mexico, Jamaica, Australia and Europe, including at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland. She has spent the past decade addressing health disparities among cancer survivors in the greater Los Angeles region. Laurel is currently a Writing Scholar at Harvard Medical School and a Research Adviser at the Cancer Research Center for Health Equity at Cedars-Sinai. She is a passionate advocate of health equity for all people, especially the hardest to reach. She is mom to three wonderful kiddos and loves anything to do with nature.

Lisa Gualtieri holds a PhD in computer science from Harvard University. Combining technology, health, and behavior change, her research focuses on medication adherence, specifically, the use of digital health to reduce unintentional nonadherence. Her newest research project focuses on improving adherence to prenatal vitamins in black pregnant people. At the Cedars-Sinai Master in Science in Health Systems, Dr. Gualtieri is course director for HSS 201C and course co-director for Capstone Series. Dr. Gualtieri also teaches Digital Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and is an Associate Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr. Gualtieri founded a non-profit, RecycleHealth.org, that collects activity trackers and provides them to underserved populations, over 14,000 to date.

Marie Lauzon is a Biostatistician in the Biostatistics core at Cedars‐Sinai Medical Center. She received her Master of Science in biostatistics at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in NYC. She also has a Bachelor of Science in mathematics from Baylor University. Lauzon has over 5 years of teaching and tutoring experience covering a wide array of subjects including mathematics, statistics, epidemiology, and SAS. Her interests include survival analysis, regression modeling, power analysis, mediation analysis, and statistical computing with SAS and R. With a focus on collaborative research, she has worked on projects across various clinical fields including genomics, oncology, cardiology, and emergency medicine.

Lisa Masson, MD, is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), UCLA, University of Southern California and University of Michigan. She was a surgery resident for two years before transferring to primary care. In 2000, her office went live on the electronic health record (EHR). Dr. Masson advocated for physicians and championed the use of EHR both locally and regionally.

Her devotion to patients led her to a more active role in informatics. She promotes improved communication and transparency and believes we can have an efficient system that embraces quality and makes it easier for physicians to make wise decisions.

Interested in writing, she received a degree in humanities from MIT, her second degree from the school. She worked as a community columnist in Modesto and wrote a patient blog for Sutter Health.

In 2011, Dr. Masson joined Cedars-Sinai as a clinical informaticist, and she currently serves as medical director.

James Mirocha is a senior biostatistician at the Research Institute and the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute. He received his Master of Science in mathematics from the University of Minnesota in 1975. He finished PhD coursework and qualifying exams in statistics and quantitative methods in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA in 2001 (ABD). Mirocha has extensive teaching experience in mathematics and statistics at the high school, community college and university levels. He has been at Cedars-Sinai since 1999. Mirocha serves on the Scientific Advisory Committee at the Clinical and Translational Research Center and on the Institutional Review Board. His main interests are in the areas of power analysis, propensity modeling, mixed and longitudinal modeling, and survival analysis. Ongoing projects are with Cardiothoracic Surgery, Trauma Research, Cardiology, Psychiatry, Pathology, Transplant and the Cancer Center.

Cedars-Sinai President and CEO Thomas M. Priselac has served Cedars-Sinai since 1994 and was also named president and CEO of the Cedars-Sinai Health System in 2017.

The Cedars-Sinai Health System includes the nationally recognized Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and its affiliated physician network, major programs in physician and health profession education and the highly regarded Burns and Allen Research Institute. The health system also includes Cedars-Sinai Marina del Rey Hospital, Torrance Memorial Medical Center and its affiliated physician network (the leading healthcare organization serving Torrance and the beach cities of Los Angeles), and Huntington Hospital and its affiliated physician network (the leading healthcare organization serving Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles). Through Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the health system is also a joint venture partner with Select Medical in the California Rehabilitation Institute, and Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center in Tarzana, California.

Throughout his career, Priselac has been a leader in the development of strategic and operational innovations to foster high-quality, safe and efficient healthcare. An author and invited speaker on policy issues regarding the delivery and financing of healthcare, Priselac has served the healthcare field in various roles during his career at Cedars-Sinai. He is a past chair of the board of trustees of the American Hospital Association and past chair of the Association of American Medical Colleges. Priselac is the Warschaw Law Chair in Health Care Leadership at Cedars-Sinai and also serves as an adjunct professor at the UCLA School of Public Health.

A native of Pennsylvania, Priselac obtained a bachelor’s degree in biology from Washington & Jefferson College in Pennsylvania, and a master’s in public health, health services administration and planning from the University of Pittsburgh.

Cody Ramin is a research scientist at the Cancer Research Center for Health Equity and acting assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences and Division of Population Sciences. She received her MS in epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and PhD in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Ramin completed her postdoctoral training at the National Cancer Institute within the Radiation Epidemiology branch and the Integrative Tumor Epidemiology branch in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics. Dr. Ramin’s research seeks to use real-world data to inform breast cancer survivorship. Overall, her research aims to identify targeted approaches and early detection strategies from the time of cancer diagnosis through treatment and survivorship, and to optimize health outcomes among breast cancer survivors.

Dr. Shirazipour is an assistant professor at the Research Center for Health Equity at Cedars-Sinai, as well as an assistant professor-in-residence in the Department of Medicine at UCLA. She is also a research consultant for the Invictus Games Foundation. Dr. Shirazipour completed her training in Canada, earning a bachelor’s in psychology (McGill University), a Master of Human Kinetics Degree in sport and exercise psychology (University of Windsor) and a PhD in Health Promotion (Queen’s University). She completed postdoctoral fellowships in health promotion at Dalhousie University and the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on behavioral sciences, particularly health behavior change and physical activity promotion for individuals with physical and mental illnesses and injuries.

Loretta So, PhD, RN, received her master of science in nursing administration and doctor of philosophy degree at UCLA. Her research interest is in patient safety and organizational and psychological influences on healthcare providers’ behavior in reporting adverse events resulting from medical errors; and second victim phenomenon in the context of moral distress impacts on healthcare providers. Her research aim is to influence policy changes to improve patient safety through clinical process enhancement and education.

Loretta has a broad background in healthcare quality management, patient safety promotion and gastroenterology nursing practice. She presented at academic conferences on patient safety, process improvement, FMEA with case illustration, quality improvement projects in gastroenterology and quality, and patient safety and healthcare process improvement.

Loretta is a member of the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing. She is currently serving as a journal and abstract reviewer for Gastroenterology Nursing.

Doug is the vice president of Managed Care and Payer Relations for Cedars-Sinai Health System and is responsible for contracting and payer strategy for the system’s hospitals, over 1,000 affiliated physicians, and various outpatient sites including urgent care, imaging, ambulatory surgery centers and cancer treatment centers. His team has primary responsibility for negotiating and monitoring professional and institutional agreements with health plans and other risk-bearing entities, including accountable care organizations and patient-centered medical homes. In addition to his managed care duties, he has oversight over the health system’s Client Services Division, responsible for establishing and growing referral relationships to support tertiary and quaternary care throughout the region. Doug has an extensive background in managed care that includes nearly a decade at Blue Shield of California in San Francisco. At Blue Shield, he held several positions in the provider network management area including the establishment of custom and narrow networks for such organizations as CalPERS. Doug’s previous experience includes healthcare benefits consulting for large employers and managed care strategy consulting for health systems. He holds a bachelor’s in finance from Emory University, an MBA from Georgia State University, and he is a Certified Employee Benefits Specialist. He has also completed an executive development program at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

Alen Voskanian, MD, brings professional and clinical expertise to his roles as medical director for Cedars-Sinai Medical Group and associate clinical professor of the highly prestigious David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is a board-certified physician in both hospice and palliative medicine and family medicine. Additionally, he is an HIV specialist certified by the American Academy of HIV Medicine.

Voskanian provides oversight of clinical, administrative and educational activities within Cedars-Sinai and enjoys establishing collaborative relationships and facilitating strong team performance. With the medical group being comprised of over 200 providers in varying specialties, he is focused on optimizing the patient-centered nature of practices and creating an environment that supports efficiency and clinical best practices for all providers and support staff. He is an active member on Cedars-Sinai board governance and various improvement committees.

As a practicing physician executive for over 15 years, Voskanian demonstrates expertise in medical management, providing leadership to newly created programs and spearheading quality improvement initiatives. Prior to joining Cedars-Sinai, he served as regional medical director for VITAS Healthcare, a national company with 12,000 employees and providing services to patients across 16 states. He also served as innovation adviser for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). 

Voskanian completed his undergraduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley (Cal), and received his medical degree from the University of California, Irvine (UCI). Following his coursework, he completed his residency at UCLA, followed by a fellowship in HIV at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. He later earned his MBA degree from Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

In recognition of his high scholastic achievement, Voskanian was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society and Beta Gamma Sigma International Honor Society. He is also the recipient of the highly regarded Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Physician Award for excellence in end-of-life care. He is also an active member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network and a fellow of the third class of the Health Innovators Fellowship.

Voskanian resides in Santa Monica, California, with his husband, Joe, and their three sons, Devin, Dylan and Dustin.

David Wrigley’s responsibilities comprise financial operations, including accounting, internal and external reporting, financial decision support and analysis, revenue cycle, cost reporting and regulatory compliance, capital structure and debt issuance, accounts payable, payroll and taxes. He also has a key role managing financial aspects of Cedars-Sinai’s growth so that it can meet the community’s demand for its services. Wrigley joined Cedars-Sinai as vice president of Finance in 2014, was promoted to senior vice president in July 2017, and had a key role in Cedars-Sinai’s acquisition of the now Cedars-Sinai Marina del Rey Hospital. Before joining Cedars-Sinai, he spent nearly a decade serving in leadership positions at Presence Health, the largest Catholic health system in Illinois. He also was manager of Healthcare Practice at the accounting firm KPMG. Wrigley has been active in the Healthcare Finance Management Association and is on the board of Holy Family Medical Center in Illinois. He earned a bachelor of science degree in accounting from Illinois State University and is a certified public accountant.