Meet the 2024 Winner: Snigdha Jain MD, MHS 

Snigdha Jain is an Assistant Professor in the section of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine at Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Jain received her medical degree from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, India. She did her residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Iowa and fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Yale School of Medicine where she also did a post-doctoral research fellowship in Geriatric Epidemiology and earned a Master of Health Sciences degree. Dr. Jain has been a member of the ATS BSHSR assembly since 2016 and more recently of the CC assembly where she serves as a member of the planning committee. She has also served as chair of the ATS student scholars program from 2020-23 and currently serves as a vice-chair.

Her research focuses on improving patient-centered outcomes of older adults with serious illnesses including critical illness and advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with an emphasis on health equity. Her work has elucidated socioeconomic disparities in patient-centered outcomes after critical illness as well as racial differences in the performance of long-term acute care hospitals in improving mobility and in post-hospitalization mortality among older adults with COPD. Her ongoing projects focused on characterizing differences in health services delivery that could be potential underlying mechanisms for disparities in long-term outcomes after critical illness and on deriving insights from geriatric epidemiology to improve outcomes for post-intensive care syndrome, are funded by the Francis Family Foundation award, the GEMSSTAR award by the National Institute on Aging, and multiple institutional support awards. Besides her work to improve patient outcomes, Dr. Jain is a strong advocate for promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the physician pipeline through numerous platforms. A few of her contributions include expansion of representation of underrepresented minorities in the ATS Student Scholars Program, original research and commentaries highlighting the role of systemic deficiencies in perpetuating gender inequities among physicians, and leadership of the on-campus childcare center at Yale University.  

She has over 40 peer-reviewed publications, 21 of which are original research reports in addition to multiple invited review articles and commentaries in reputable journals such as the Annals of Internal Medicine, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Annals of the ATS, Critical Care Medicine, Chest, and Academic Medicine. Her high-impact and visionary work earned her the Emerging Generations Award by the American Society of Clinical Investigation in the inaugural year of this award.

Description:

The award will be given to a very early career individual with demonstrated potential to make outstanding scientific and scholarly contributions relevant to behavioral and social sciences, clinical epidemiology, statistics, health services research, health economics, comparative clinical efficacy and effectiveness research, patient-centered outcomes research, performance measurement, quality improvement, or implementation science. This award is to recognize individuals with burgeoning talent and dedication to a career applying these methodologies to lung diseases, critical illness, or sleep disorders, and who have already demonstrated significant engagement within the BSHSR Assembly, or ATS as a whole. The award committee encourages nominations from groups who are under-represented in medicine. Awardees will be presented with a framed certificate at the ATS International conference. For guidance regarding whether a nominee is more appropriate for the Emerging or Early Award category, please reach out to the BSHSR Planning Committee Chair ahead of the submission deadline.

Criteria:

• Current trainee, Instructor, Assistant Professor, or an equivalent rank in a non-academic institution
• Currently in post-doctoral or clinical training, or up to 3 years after completion of terminal training degree, excluding time off for personal circumstances
• Current ATS member
• Have not previously received an Emerging Career award or Early Career Achievement award from any ATS assembly
• Cannot concurrently be nominated for an Early Career Achievement award
• The submission package must include the candidate’s updated curriculum vitae and a nomination letter from an assembly member addressing the candidate’s qualifications within the scored award domains.

Scoring:

Applicants are scored on 6 criteria using a 1-5 rating system across the following categories; summed scores provide an overall score:

• Scientific and scholarly contributions/products
• Teaching/mentoring/educational contributions
• Clinical and/or academic excellence and leadership contributions
• Participation in BSHSR Assembly and/or other ATS activities (apprenticeships, committees, workshops, etc.)
• Demonstrated interest and promise in a career focused on contributions relevant to the BSHSR Assembly
• Overall impact/impression of the dossier submitted for award application