UCSF psychologist and clinician-researcher Janice Y. Tsoh, PhD (right) receives the 2024 Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Underrepresented Minority Research Mentoring Award from Diversity Committee Research Task Force co-chairs Johanna Folk, PhD (left) and Lauren Haack, PhD (center).
UC San Francisco psychologist and professor Janice Y. Tsoh, PhD, has been recognized by the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (DPBS) for a quarter century of excellence in mentoring trainee and early career researchers with its 2024 Underrepresented Minority (URM) Research Mentoring Award. She was presented with the award during the department's annual Diversity Celebration event on Oct. 23, 2024.
The URM Research Mentoring Award was established in 2020 by the DPBS Diversity Committee's Research Task Force to recognize excellence in psychiatric and biobehavioral research mentorship of departmental trainees who are underrepresented minorities in medicine. It is given annually to a department member who exemplifies the vital role that research mentoring plays in building and maintaining the robust, rich pipeline of junior researchers needed to conduct impactful research aimed at understanding and eliminating health disparities based on race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and other factors.
Tsoh is a clinician-researcher whose own works aims to promote health equity by making treatment more accessible. She focuses on ways to reduce nicotine dependence and encourage smoking cessation in underserved populations, including Asian American smokers. She also studies ways to improve health through community-based approaches, including colorectal cancer screenings, peer and family outreach that encourages good nutrition and increased physical activity, and mobile health care.
She earned her doctorate in psychology, with a concentration in health psychology, at the University of Rhode Island. Tsoh completed a residency in clinical psychology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and a fellowship in cancer prevention at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, followed by a fellowship in substance abuse treatment at UCSF. She is a member of the American Psychological Association and the Society of Behavioral Medicine.
Since joining the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences' faculty in 1999, Tsoh has played an active mentorship role across multiple programs at the department and university levels. She is the associate director of the UCSF Postdoctoral Traineeship in Substance Use Disorders Treatment and Services Research, co-director of the Asian American Research Center on Health, and research director for the UCSF Vietnamese Community Health Promotion Project. In addition, Tsoh serves as a core faculty member of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education's postdoctoral fellowship program and co-leads the UCSF Clinical Psychology Training Program's research seminar series. She is also a founding member of the DPBS Faculty Mentoring Council.
Tsoh has served as the primary research or co-mentor for dozens of undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral trainees and faculty members at UCSF and beyond over the past 25 years. Her mentorship has led to 17 diversity award supplements from the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, more than 60 published abstracts and trainee-led poster and podium presentations at regional and national scientific meetings, over 40 peer-reviewed journal publications with trainee first authorship, and countless national, regional, and university honors and awards.
About UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a focus on providing unparalleled patient care, conducting impactful research, training the next generation of behavioral health leaders, and advancing diversity, health equity, and community across the field.
UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences conducts its clinical, educational, and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building; UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital; UCSF Health medical centers and community hospitals across San Francisco; UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland; Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; the San Francisco VA Health Care System; UCSF Fresno; and numerous community-based sites around the San Francisco Bay Area.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Neurology, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area.
