Navkiran “Kiran” K. Shokar, M.D., MPH, is chair of the Department of Population Health, a professor of population health and associate dean for Community Affairs at Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin.

Prior to joining Dell Med, Shokar served as a tenured professor of family and community medicine and molecular and translational medicine at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso (TTUHSC). She served as interim associate dean for clinical research, director for cancer prevention and control in the Center of Emphasis for Cancer, and vice chair for research in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Before going to El Paso, she spent 11 years as a faculty member at UTMB Galveston.

Shokar was born and raised in England, where she received her Master of Arts degree from Cambridge University and her medical degree from Oxford University Medical School. She completed family medicine residency training in the U.K. (Banbury, Oxfordshire) and in the U.S. (Houston, Texas), where she served as chief resident. She subsequently completed her Master of Public Health at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health. 

In more than 20 years in academic medicine, Shokar has worked as a clinician, educator and clinical researcher. Her research interests include interventions in cancer prevention and control, shared decision-making, and community-based research to address cancer health disparities among vulnerable, poor and underserved populations. She has developed innovative population health approaches to bridge the divide between the community, the health care delivery system and public health.

Shokar has received more than $25 million in research funding from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the American Cancer Society (ACS), among others. She is well published, serves as a reviewer for many journals and served for six years as a deputy editor for the Journal of General Internal Medicine (JGIM). She is the recipient of two Dean’s Excellence in Research awards, the prestigious TTUHSC Chancellor’s Council Distinguished Research Award and the North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) Distinguished Mentor award.

In addition to her institutional leadership roles, she has served on several national steering committees representing all four academic family medicine organizations and has served on key committees of NAPCRG and the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM). At the state level, she serves as chair of the Prevention Advisory Committee for CPRIT.

Michael Pignone, M.D., MPH, MACP, is an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Population Health at Dell Medical School.

Before joining Dell Med, Pignone was a professor of medicine, chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine and director of the Institute for Healthcare Quality Improvement at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his medical degree in 1993 and completed residency training in primary care internal medicine in 1996, both at the University of California, San Francisco. He then completed fellowship training in 1996-98 through the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, including a master’s degree in epidemiology from the UNC School of Public Health.

Pignone’s research is focused on chronic disease screening, prevention and treatment, and on improving medical decision making and health equity. His main areas of interest include cancer screening and prevention, particularly colorectal cancer screening. He has developed and tested novel interventions, including decision aids, to mitigate literacy-related health disparities and to improve the use of appropriate preventive services. He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed journal articles.

From 2013-2016, he served as a member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, and has served on a number of national guideline and quality improvement panels, including work for the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association and the National Committee on Quality Assurance in Healthcare. In addition, he has served as an associate editor for Medical Decision Making and as an editorial board member for JAMA Internal Medicine and publications committee member for the American College of Physicians. Pignone is a member of the Society of General Internal Medicine and the Society for Medical Decision Making, and he is a master of the American College of Physicians and fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

Jessica Calderon-Mora, DrPH, received her master's and doctoral training at the UTHealth School of Public Health with a focus on health promotion and behavioral sciences. Her work focuses on health disparities and cancer prevention in the Latinx community.

She has served as co-investigator, co-program director and program director for several Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas-funded prevention programs. Her research focus has been primarily on cervical cancer screening and the human papillomavirus vaccination. Calderon-Mora hopes to expand her work in HPV self-sampling and cervical cancer prevention among the Latinx community throughout Texas.

Cynthia Chacon, MPH, supports department leadership in establishing cancer prevention and control programs and primary care-focused health transformation efforts.

Prior to joining Dell Med in 2021, Chacon worked as a lead analyst at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso and as a program coordinator for the El Paso Center for Diabetes. She earned a master’s degree in public health from The University of Texas at El Paso in 2012 and is an active member of the Gates Millennium Alumni Association.