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THE TGF (SPONSORED BY PATRICIA HILL)-RPB FELLOWSHIP IN GLAUCOMA -2025 Bushra Usmani, MD University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Dr. Busra Usmani’s research niche is in big data. Using administrave datasets and naonal-level data, she is exploring the epidemiology of ophthalmic diseases in the United States, their impact on paents and the healthcare system, paent outcomes, and the idenficaon of disparies and at-risk groups to help decrease ophthalmic morbidity and mortality. Dr. Usmani has published with the Naonwide Emergency Department (ED) Sample and Naonwide Inpaent Sample, exploring the most common types of ocular traumas that cause significant healthcare burdens with hospitalizaons and high healthcare costs, and idenfying the disparies in access to care. She also published about the opioid epidemic and the effect it had on Ophthalmology by looking into associated ophthalmic emergencies presenng to the ED. Her work spans across all ophthalmic speciales and also involves optometrists. Using the IRIS registry (Intelligent Research in Sight), Dr. Usmani will invesgate what impacts glaucoma progression and if loss to follow-up plays a significant part in this progression. This project will be under the mentorship of Dr. Andrew Williams, building upon his team’s previous work. “The grant funds will be instrumental in taking this research to the next level, providing necessary support for advanced data analysis and storage, and facilitang the presentaon of our research at prominent ophthalmology conferences. In the future, I aim to connue exploring the intersecon between ophthalmic diseases, paent outcomes, and healthcare system impacts to develop targeted intervenons to improve eye health on a global scale. I am confident that we can make significant strides in addressing the challenges posed by glaucoma and other ophthalmic diseases, enhancing the quality of life for those affected.” – Bushra Usmani
THE TGF (SPONSORED BY PATRICIA HILL)-RPB FELLOWSHIP IN GLAUCOMA -2025 Patrice Marie Hicks, PhD, MPH University of Michigan Dr. Hicks is an ophthalmic epidemiologist with a focus on assessing health disparies in eye health and vision outcomes. Her long-term goal is to develop an independent and interdisciplinary research program to understand how social determinants of health affect vision outcomes, ulmately informing policy and intervenon. Through her post-doctoral research, she has established that where people live impacts both the frequency and severity of presentaon with acute and chronic eye disease. Her research porolio includes several studies on glaucoma including idenfying facilitators and barriers to glaucoma medicaon adherence and assessing if the outcomes of a personalized glaucoma coaching program differ based on paents’ neighborhood-level resources. She has received funding through a Naonal Instutes of Health K12 Instuonal Research and Academic Career Development Award and a Diversity Supplement to support this work. One of her ongoing studies is evaluang the inclusion and accuracy of sex and gender, as well as race and ethnicity, in arficial intelligence applicaons in ophthalmology. She is also exploring the barriers and facilitators encountered by underrepresented minority medical students in ophthalmology, which she intends to apply to enhance the effecveness of programs fostering future success for these students. The proposed study will build upon her prior work by focusing on glaucoma to idenfy specific social risk factors for more targeted upstream and downstream intervenons. “The generous funding from The Glaucoma Foundaon (sponsored by Patricia Hill) - Research to Prevent Blindness Glaucoma Fellowship will allow me to obtain stascal support to carry out data analysis and disseminate the findings from this work through publicaon and aendance at the Associaon for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) annual meeng. Aendance at ARVO will provide me with networking opportunies to form addional collaboraons in the field of eye health equity.” -Dr. Patrice Hicks