Niharika Khanna

Dr. Niharika Khanna is a Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Maryland, School of Medicine (UMSOM), and Associate Chair Population Health Sciences. She is also a member of the Tumor Immunology Program at the Greenebaum Cancer Center, Chair of the Maryland Department of Health Cancer Collaborative, Member CRISP Reporting and Analytics Committee, and member of the Board of the Maryland Tobacco Resources Commission.

Dr Khanna is an academic family physician with 34 years of experience in family medicine and in low-risk obstetrics and gynecology. Dr Khanna started her academic career as an Assistant Residency Director with primary responsibility for curricular innovations, including establishment of the reproductive health training track. Dr Khanna received 13 teaching and mentoring awards at the University of Maryland, in addition to being honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Maryland Academy of Family Medicine; Top 100 women in Maryland by the Baltimore Daily Record; Primary Care Champion nominee by the White House; Spotlight by the North American Primary Care Research group, a nominee for the Hind Rattan Award by the Non-Resident Indian Welfare Society of India, and other honors.

Dr Khanna leads the statewide Maryland Tobacco Control Resource Center(MTCRC), and is leading a tobacco treatment project to increase the number of patients referred to Lung Cancer Screening. With prior NCI funding, Dr Khanna has led the NCI Cancer Moonshot Cancer Center Cessation Initiative (C3I) to develop the tobacco cessation infrastructure for the Greenebaum Cancer Center; in addition to NCI funding to explore EVALI (E-cigarette Vaping Associated Lung Injury).

COVID-19

In response to the pandemic, Dr Khanna led a population health team for the Department of Family and Community Medicine to establish a COVID-19 dashboard to track all COVID-19 tested and vaccinated individuals to ensure seamless capture of data, development of a dashboard for faculty and stakeholders, communication of results to patients, patient education and management of individuals being tested for SARS CoV2, and to inform policy makers in directing resources to areas with high Area Deprivation Indices.

Through a generous grant from the Maryland Community Health Resources Commission, Dr Khanna leads a team of researchers to partner with the NAACP, Youth Community Organizations and the UMB Community Engagement Center to address social barriers to COVID-19 testing and vaccination hesitancy in West Baltimore.

Leveraging this infrastructure, Dr Khanna and her team are awardees from HRSA of a $7.79 million dollar grant to address COVID-19 hesitancy in youth and families in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Delaware. Community partners for this project include the NAACP, AME Zion Church, Community Behavioral Health, Maryland Area Health Education Centers, National Federation for Families, Family Voices and the UMB Community Engagement Center, Schools of Medicine, Pharmacy, Social Work and Nursing.

Dr Khanna leads the NCI sub-award C3I COVID-Smoking initiative to participate in the NCI COVID+Smoking registry to elucidate the association of COVID-19 with tobacco; the registry will include data from 21 participating cancer centers and 1,100,000 patients. Data capture utilized advanced Epic tools and has accrued 78,792 COVID-19 patients from University of Maryland Medical Systems from February 2020 to January 2022. Dr Khanna leads the team to support Novavax and Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine clinical trials to provide post vaccination respiratory illness evaluation at the UMB.

TOBACCO

Dr Khanna is the Principal Investigator for the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Cancer Moonshot C3I (Cancer Center Cessation Initiative) for the Greenebaum Cancer Center, to build sustainable tobacco cessation programs, refine electronic medical records use including clinical decision support tools, change clinical and organizations standards of care. She is also Principal Investigator of a 3 year NCI grant to study e-cigarettes and vaping related lung injury (EVALI) at the University of Maryland.

Funded by the Maryland Department of Health Center for Tobacco Prevention and Control, Dr Khanna has developed an Electronic Health Record Clinician Decision Support solution in Epic electronic health records to electronically connect the Maryland Tobacco Quit Line in a two way communication to reach 156 practices in the University of Maryland Medical System to serve 3,912,403 Maryland residents. This work has been cited by the Centers for Disease Control in the Million Hearts Tobacco Cessation Change Package. (Page 28 UM Medicine)

Dr Khanna is a member of the Maryland Department of Health Telehealth Policy workgroup, the Maryland Department of Health Electronic Health Network Workgroup.

Dr. Khanna’s interests are in clinical translational research to translate research into community programs, optimizing electronic medical records, and specifically in learning health systems in primary care. Dr. Khanna is a resident of Howard County, breast cancer survivor diagnosed in 2009, an avid swimmer, and gardener. She has one married daughter and two grand dogs.

Dr. Khanna envisions the CME curriculum for the LHMCAANA committee to become a flashpoint for innovative presentations, for animated discussion, and a springboard for future collaboration.