SCCR Welcomes New Associate Director - Coordinating Center

SCCR welcomes Nadia Elkarra, MD, who recently joined as the associate director of the Coordinating Center.

In her new role, she will lead a highly skilled team that provides a full array of clinical research services for trials supported by industry, foundations and government sponsors. 

Bringing a remarkable passion for research and a thoughtful, insightful curiosity to promote innovation and change, Nadia has more than a decade of research experience directing highly complex translational research, particularly multisite and digital health programs, both nationally and globally. She is interested in bridging gaps between health care access and technology. 

Born and raised in San Francisco, Nadia’s interests in global health and international development led her to pursue a medical degree at the University of Jordan. During her time abroad she served as the Watson-Akil Research Fellow with Microclinic International in collaboration with UC Berkeley, the Jordanian Ministry of Health, and Queen Rania’s Royal Health Awareness Society. Her work involved the use of a Microclinic social network model for health care professionals and patients with chronic illnesses in underserved populations. 

She has provided psychological and behavioral analysis under grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR). That research was through her work with NYU's Emergency Medicine Research Department, where she also served as a research fellow. Her research interests at NYU also included acute illnesses in the pediatric population. She completed a clinical clerkship at the NYU/Bellevue Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine, which further ignited her interest in access to care for underserved populations. 

After completing medical school, she became a research associate and later Global Health Programs Consultant with UCSF’s Global Health Sciences Department in the Middle East and North Africa region. She also served as the director of research and analytics for Vassar Brother Medical Center (Health Quest) in New York. Therapeutic areas she has worked on include: cardiology, neurology, oncology, surgery, dermatology, and psychiatry.