Sheiphali Gandhi, MD, MPH, Receives 2024 Irene Perstein Award to Create UCSF Silicosis Support Program
Sheiphali Gandhi, MD, MPH, assistant professor of occupational/environmental medicine and pulmonary/critical care medicine, has been awarded a 2024 Irene Perstein Award recognizing her research on silicosis and its prevalence in vulnerable workers in California.
With the Perstein Award, Dr. Gandhi aims to start a silicosis and vulnerable worker program at UCSF to increase advocacy and create resources for workers with highly morbid occupational diseases. Dr. Gandhi's award is supported by the Mount Zion Health Fund, which, through its grantmaking, is committed to advancing the health of the underserved who have limited access to quality health services.
She plans to initially concentrate on silicosis, a long-term lung disease caused by inhaling silica dust, but acknowledges pulmonologists see patients with a variety of issues like infections and autoimmune diseases as well.
“I find it really interesting,” Dr. Gandhi said. “The lungs are the most exposed organ to the environment other than your skin.”
Dr. Gandhi’s current research focuses on engineered stone fabricators who cut quartz countertops. Engineered or artificial stone contains more than three times the amount of silica found in natural stone, and the silica dust enters the workers’ lungs during the cutting process and causes an inflammatory reaction.
Dr. Gandhi and her colleagues at UCSF, UCLA, and the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) have collectively diagnosed 156 people with silicosis in California to-date, and about 20 percent of them have needed lung transplants because the disease was so severe. On average, the lung transplant patients are in their mid-40s, and 98 percent of them are Latino men. Aside from lung transplants, silicosis doesn’t have a treatment right now.
“It’s a highly vulnerable workforce,” Dr. Gandhi said. “It really emphasizes the fact that here, but also internationally, the people doing the dirtiest jobs come from very vulnerable communities.”
While Dr. Gandhi only began doing silicosis research in 2020, her interest in occupational lung disease began during her internal medicine residency at the University of Minnesota. It was during rotations abroad in Tanzania as global health chief resident that she first saw patients with occupational chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
The most common cause of COPD in lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) is exposure during cooking in poorly ventilated homes. At her primary care clinic, a refugee clinic, Dr. Gandhi frequently treated women with cooking-related COPD or miners from the local tanzanite mine. This interest led her to a fellowship at Northwestern University where she found mentorship with Robert A. Cohen, MD, and deepened her interest in public health surveillance and prevention-focused approaches.
Dr. Gandhi hopes the California Silicosis Support Network at UCSF will provide resources to help countertop workers more safely work with engineered stone, recognize silicosis symptoms, and connect at-risk workers with healthcare and legal resources. She also looks forward to strengthening partnerships with community-based organizations and continuing to work with UCLA and CDPH to build a California registry of exposed workers to track their progression and outcomes.
The Irene Perstein Award was founded in 2007 and honors the legacy of Irene Holmes Perstein who left a bequest to provide annual awards to outstanding junior women scientists in the UCSF School of Medicine. Two other UCSF faculty members, Courtney Lane-Donovan, MD, PhD, and Monica Yang, MD, are also 2024 Irene Perstein Award recipients.