Navya Krishna

IR II pd. 2/English 12 AP
1/29/20
Interview #2

Dr. Anushree Agarwal, Assistant Professor of Medicine, University of California San Francisco
San Francisco, CA
1/29/20

NK: Hello, this is Navya.

AA: Hi, Navya?
NK: Yes.
AA: Hi, this is Dr. Agarwal. How are you?
NK: I’m great, thanks. How are you?
AA: Good! I’m sorry to take longer than I anticipated, I was in a patient’s room.
NK: No, no, it’s totally fine. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.
AA: Oh, it’s my pleasure. So, bring me up to speed because I probably don’t know much, so tell
me briefly about yourself and how can I be helpful.
NK: Yeah, so I am a senior in high school, and I’m in a research program at my school, and so
my research topic is maternal mortality from cardiovascular disease. And, so that’s how I got in
contact with Dr. Foster, is she was my advisor last year - this is my second year in the program -
and I am trying to get my research paper published. I haven’t figured out which publication yet,
but I’m trying to adapt my paper to fit the guidelines for publication. So that’s where I was
hoping you could give me some advice.
AA: Sure, I would be more than happy to. So, tell me what have you done in the last couple of
years.
NK: So, for my research, it’s a metacognitive review of existing data, and so my whole research
paper is advocating for initiatives like the one that Dr. Foster was a part of with CMQCC for
finding ways to reduce maternal mortality, and a lot of the methods that I’ve found are trying to
distinguish between heart failure symptoms and pregnancy symptoms. So, a lot of what my data
that I collected was, was what states have been doing in order to reduce their maternal mortality
rate. And so a lot of the data that I’ve collected hasn’t necessarily been quantitative. It’s also
researching the kinds of initiatives that states have been producing and have been enacting. So, I
was just hoping that you could help me in terms of, I don’t really know how to format my data
because it’s not going to fit into tables necessarily. So, I was wondering if I should just do a
commentary instead of a research paper with a section for data. Is that something that seems
feasible?
AA: Where are you located?
NK: I’m in Maryland.
AA: Oh, so you’re not here.
NK: No, I’m not.
AA: Ok. We can talk more about how to report a qualitative data. We call it a qualitative
research. It’s not going to be a quantitative research.
NK: Right.
AA: And it’s a very different ballgame when you have to analyze a qualitative research. My
question to you is tell me the source of your data. Where did you get the, all these, you know all
the states that you have the data from and how have you figured out which, what have you found
so far and how?
NK: Yeah, so the biggest one that I found was California because of that maternal mortality
initiative, is they had a lot of existing data compiled already about maternal death rates from
pregnancy and, like how many of the patients were seeking help, or prenatal care, at the time,
and also their plan of action for that so that was a big thing. I also found some things from North
Carolina where they were targeting mostly drug abuse during pregnancy, but I found a little bit
on cardiovascular disease. And then because I’m in Maryland, and the publication that I
hopefully get published in might end up being something that’s more local, if I can’t get it into a
more national or international journal, I also included some data on how the Maryland maternal
mortality rate has increased and what is currently being done to address that issue.
AA: And what is the source of your data?
NK: So, some of it, for the California data, that was from a published research paper that came
out of the CMQCC initiative, so that was written by the doctors, like Dr. Foster, who were part
of that. And then, for North Carolina, they publish - for both North Carolina and Maryland - they
publish maternal mortality, sort of, or I don’t know if it’s mortality, but like, women’s health,
pregnancy reviews annually, so a lot of, like they have conferences and they do reports on that,
and so a lot of that data that I have came from those sources.
AA: Are they published somewhere? Or they are conference updates.
NK: I think they are published.
AA: Ok. Do you mind this for me?
NK: Sure.
AA: Send me, email me, those papers - the published articles -
NK: Ok.
AA: And maybe like a document that you brought - you look like you’ve reviewed these papers
very, in a lot of depth, it’s very impressive all the work that you’ve done,
NK: Thank you.
AA: And there’s so much important data in there that we can think of how to put it out and
summarize our findings. What I was thinking is it could be some kind of a - I like the
commentary idea, I like the review of the literature, a review paper - that could be another good
idea to, you know, like a review article on maternal deaths or maternal outcomes among
pregnant women.
NK: Right.
AA: And use these papers as your references to write the review.
NK: Ok. Yeah, so I can send you my research, like what I’ve done so far, and, yeah, any
feedback that you have or any suggestions would be incredible.
AA: Yes, and give me a document that summarizes all that you’ve found
NK: Ok
AA: And cite it, where you got that information from, like if you got it from the California paper,
North Carolina paper, or Maryland. Or if it is just generally from the literature. You know,
because there could be some review articles in the past.
NK: Right.
AA: That has, you know, the topic. Or small center studies.
NK: OK.
AA: Because if you do have the review article, I think the most important goal for a review
article is that you have literally reviewed every literature published on that topic.
NK: Right.
AA: Whether it is some single centers, small samples, big samples, population based. It could be
non-US study and that should be fine.
NK: Ok.
AA: So, that could be one goal. Meta-analysis would be tough because meta-analysis papers are
usually you are, have data from some randomized trials or some really large observational
studies in your paper that kind of multiple qualitative analysis. So there are two ways that I think
we could this is are a review article
NK: Ok.
AA: Which could be a good review of all that we know in the literature about this topic. I would
suggest you to look at some review articles and see how they are written.
NK: Ok.
AA: The goal will be - most of the review articles in high-impact journals are invited, but we can
find journals that take review articles that are not invited.
NK: Ok.
AA: Might not be very big impact, but it could be a very good review article for us to write. The
other option could be that we publish it as a qualitative research, which will be a hard sell
because we didn’t start the project as a qualitative, this is all like, again, in other words, it’s more
of a review of literature than a qualitative -
NK: Yeah
AA: - because you’re not interviewing people. I think the more I’m thinking about it, a review
article or a commentary that you said could both be a very good way to publish the, your
research.
NK: Yeah.
AA: To get done. And we can either, for both of them, you will need to do the same amount of,
like literature search.
NK: Ok.
AA: It looks like you’ve already done a lot of it, so I think it’s just making sure that there is
nothing else that you might have missed,
NK: Yeah.
AA: Other than the, you know, small data that you might have not thought of, but I would say
non-US studies, any studies on, even if it’s a case report.
NK: Ok.
AA: Or small case series, or small samples, or large population based.
NK: Right.
AA: On the topic of maternal death.
NK: Ok.
AA: During pregnancy. I think that would be something that could be a good summary. And
then, and then how to do it as a review or commentary could be all dependent on what we find.
NK: Ok.
AA: Because for both of them, I think the literature will be similar.
NK: Ok, yeah. Yeah, because I am currently writing my abstract, and because I don’t have like a
formal results section of my paper, it’s been hard to summarize my findings.
AA: Yeah.
NK: So I think once we sort through all of that, once I figure out how I want to structure that
section, I think it’ll be a lot easier to summarize the findings and write conclusions. So…
AA: Yeah.
NK: Yeah.
AA: I think it will be nice for me to see the articles, and I can see if we can, where what were
you planning to submit the abstract?
NK: So, I don’t have like a list of journals yet, because I’m still trying to figure out if my paper
would be suited more for a cardiology journal or publication or an obstetrics and gynecology
journal or publication. So right now, my abstract has like an overview of my paper, sort of like a
thesis, and then materials and methods, and then I am trying to figure out a results and then a
conclusions section. Just based on all of the abstracts that I’ve read so far for papers that are
similar in the subject matter and the style of the paper that I’ve written. So I don’t, maybe after
you give me your thoughts on my research so far, I might end up changing it, but that’s sort of
how it’s been turning out so far.
AA: And what is the timeline?
NK: So I, because I’m a senior this year, I have, as a personal goal, until August of this year to
send my paper in. So, I don’t expect to hear back like very soon, but I like, I want to have my
paper ready to send by August of this year.
AA: Send where?
NK: To a journal, just for them to say yes or no, like the preliminary round of editing.
AA: Send to the journal, you mean?
NK: Yes.
AA: Ok. It takes a long time.
NK: Right.
AA: Because what I’m hearing is you’re going to apply next year, is that correct?
NK: Well, I’ve already applied to college, and so I don’t think I’ll be able to continue my
research in college because any of that research will probably be like working on someone else’s
research, so if I want to have a publication, and I don’t know how big the journal is going to end
up being, like if I’m going to send it to mostly local, like in my area, sort of publications or if I’m
going to try to send it to a bigger medical journal, but I, I want to have that ready to send by
August.
AA: Sounds good.
NK: Ok.
AA: Are you interested in presenting your findings at a conference?
NK: Yes, that would be really a great experience, yeah.
AA: Ok. So, I can give you a few timelines how we can plan this whole thing out.
NK: Ok.
AA: I’m trying to see… So American Heart Association, and you should look it up on Google
NK: Right
AA: American Heart Association has scientific sessions, yearly, annual scientific sessions
NK: Ok
AA: Those sessions usually are conducted in November.
NK: Ok.
AA: It’s a three to four day conference where all the, it’s a very, it’s an international conference,
so all the cardiologists from all over come and, you know they have their abstracts, oral talks and
everything. It’s a really great conference.
NK: Right, yeah
AA: This year, the next year, it’s in Dallas.
NK: Ok.
AA: Texas. I am, usually, every almost May or June is their deadline for abstract submission.
NK: Ok.
AA: And then you get to know around I think September, October whether your abstract is
accepted. I think it’s sooner, maybe.
NK: Ok.
AA: By September you get to know if your abstract is accepted, and if it is accepted, you will
know whether it is accepted as a poster or an oral abstract. And if it’s accepted based on
whatever, the way it is, then you go in November and present it.
NK: Ok.
AA: You think that timeline will work for you?
NK: Yes, I think that should work.
AA: Perfect. So this is how we, I usually think about when you are trying to do an abstract for a
conference,
NK: Ok
AA: We, our goal together is to get a clear idea on what you’re going to do with this project.
NK: Right.
AA: How we are going to write it up, based on that get the abstract done by the deadline for
AHA abstract submission, whichever that is in June,
NK: Ok
AA: So between June to August, we will do what you mentioned - your deadline - which is
getting the paper done,
NK: Ok
AA: You know, the paper done, edited, maybe that you are still waiting for our coauthors to
make their edits, but we should just start thinking of, you know how our paper is, at least the first
couple drafts of the paper should be done.
NK: Right.
AA: I guess like, you’re going to get busy after that, which is fine with this timeline. Usually, if a
journal, if a scientific session accepts your abstract, they do not want the paper or the findings to
be published anywhere else until the day you present the abstract.
NK: Ok.
AA: The reason is because they publish all the abstracts in their journals
NK: Right.
AA: Ok, so what we can plan, but what I always tell my trainees is get your paper done.
NK: Ok.
AA: And maybe even submit to one of the journals a month or so before the abstract, you know
presentation. Because all journals take about a month to review, and there’s always some
suggestions by the reviewers to make some edits or changes.
NK: Ok.
AA: It’s a long process, you know. Between your first submission to a publication sometimes it
could take somewhere between six months to a year.
NK: Ok.
AA: Until you see it in the journal. So, it’s a long process. So I feel like, I think we have a good
timeline here, our first deadline would be getting the abstract done by June,
NK: Ok.
AA: Ok, this is February, so we have four months to figure out exactly what the goal of this
paper is going to look like, how is it going to, is it going to be a review paper, whatever it is.
NK: Right.
AA: Get the abstract for that done by June, work on the, of course while you’re doing the
abstract, you are intermittently working on the paper as well, and I suggest whenever you do the
literature search for your paper,
NK: Yeah,
AA: Start writing the introduction. In other words, put those literature searches, whatever you’re
finding, into like sentences, and start citing them. Do you have, have you ever cite, have you ever
written a scientific, and do you know how to cite literature in your writing?
NK: Yeah, so I use APA for scientific work, and then I use in-text citations.
AA: Awesome. So you are pretty familiar with that whole concept.
NK: Right, yeah.
AA: Ok, so then you can start doing that so that more than 50% work of your research will be
done.
NK: Ok.
AA: And you’re just doing the literature search. You know, the introduction and the discussion.
You can always clean it up later but a lot of the writing for that, a lot of the literature search for
that will be done by June.
NK: Ok, yeah.
AA: The other thing I have learned, which helps a lot, is do a literature search to find a paper that
you think your paper will look like.
NK: Ok.
AA: It does not have to be in the area of maternal mortality, it does not have to be in the area of
cardiovascular. It could be any paper.
NK: Ok.
AA: But if you can find the area, perfect. But start, find a paper and sometimes it may be two or
three papers,
NK: Right,
AA: Because you like something in paper 1, something in paper 2 and something in paper 3.
NK: Yeah.
AA: And for a second, copy-paste that into a word document.
NK: Ok.
AA: Ok? And put your track changes on, and use that thing that you copy-pasted as your
template,
NK: Ok.
AA: And assuming that it’s your paper, now start write, start editing it to put your data, like your
thoughts, like your content in it.
NK: Ok, yeah, yeah.
AA: That’s I think your literature content. So, the advantage of doing that is multiple. One, you
write the paper in the format that the journal likes,
NK: Yeah.
AA: If you are not confused what you should write, what should be your introduction, what
should be the first line of the introduction, what should be the second line of the introduction,
because what you do is you read that paper and see what is this line trying to say. Okay, this line
is trying to tell me the prevalence of X in the US.
NK: Right.
AA: Take a look for your prevalence, in your areas or subject matter, and write it in that format.
Because you know that journal likes that format.
NK: Ok.
AA: Okay? So, it really helps. You know, especially when you’re writing the paper for the first
few times, it really helps to do that.
NK: Ok. Yeah.
AA: So, I’m telling you all of this now because you’re going to do the literature search, and
you’re going to put all of this into like a summary statement, and I want you to do the same style
from now on, so that your paper is getting ready and you’re not starting from scratch.
NK: Right, yeah.
AA: So I think use these steps, get some review articles or papers that you think your paper
could definitely look like this, start, see, you know, in fact I used to even copy the tables and
their figures.
NK: Ok.
AA: Or if I have a data and I want to say it in some way, and I want to look for a literature
search, and I find some figure, and I’m like this is a nice way of me showing my data, so I just
use that figure, and see exactly how those authors have made that figure, come up with that idea.
And then do exactly how they have done.
NK: Ok.
AA: Okay? And it’s okay to do it that way. Because sometimes we feel that we don’t want to
copy, it’s not copying. It’s just, you have you’re subject matter to discuss.
NK: Right.
AA: But it really gives you, provides you a very good template to look at.
NK: Ok.
AA: I can also email you a writing template I have,
NK: Ok.
AA: The only problem is that it’s for original investigations.
NK: Oh, ok.
AA: Okay? But, but the basic idea is really the same. Which is, introduction, methods, results,
discussion, the key points are same.
NK: Ok.
AA: The advantage of that is that it really makes you, it really makes sure that you cover the key
points that the reviewers are looking at. You know, like why is this study important, what is
already known. Look, in those questions, you really make sure to know the answers. So, I can
send you that. It will be helpful for you to make sure that all the questions are covered in the way
writing. And we can keep the editing process going along the way.
NK: Ok, yeah.
AA: Questions. I know I did a lot of talking here.
NK: No, actually you answered most of my questions.
AA: Ok, Navya. So, let me summarize what we talked about.
NK: Ok.
AA: First think, timeline.
NK: Right.
AA: And for a June deadline, you have to look up what the actual deadline is, we will start with
the June deadline for the abstract, and August/September deadline for the first draft of the
manuscript that we can send to coauthors for review.
NK: Ok.
AA: By June, I think you’ll have four months, you should keep some deadline for yourself for
every month.
NK: Ok.
AA: And see how you proceed with this. The way you will do this is first, you will do a thorough
literature search, find everything and anything published on this topic,
NK: Ok.
AA: Okay? Keep writing a summary statement as you find them. Citing your stuff so you can get
a lot of writing work and, you know, it’s grunt work, but not as, it’s like a lot of time-consuming,
NK: Yeah,
AA: That gets done. And at the same time, that helps to organize your thoughts.
NK: Right.
AA: While you are doing the literature search for the topic, you also, I’m sure, will come across
articles that you feel like, Oh, my paper will look great if it is this format, or if it is exactly this,
but I will replace with mortality by, maternal mortality or cardiovascular by this, or whatever it
is.
NK: Yeah.
AA: So, make sure you keep some templates on the side, and start putting your, you know like,
you know how they teach you writing skills, put everything in bins?
NK: Yeah.
AA: You know, you have these three paragraphs and these, and you make these different bins of
paragraphs, and you put your points in those bins, and then you write them.
NK: Right.
AA: So I think start doing that,
NK: Ok.
AA: From now on. I don’t know, start from there, and go from there and see what it turns out to
be.
NK: Ok.
AA: Okay? I think this is great stuff, there has, it has a lot of potential to be published, in a
medical journal. It’s a new topic. It’s a hot topic.
NK: Yeah.
AA: Because everyone is interested in improving maternal mortality.
NK: Yeah.
AA: So, I think if we can do a good literature review, and write a review, I think that’ll be a good
paper.
NK: Thank you so much.
AA: Yeah. It’s a good topic that you picked.
NK: Thank you.
AA: Okay? So, feel free to email me or text me, I can give you my cell phone number, you can
text me if you have any questions along the way. I am also working on a lot of deadlines, over
the next few months, especially because I’m writing a grant which is due in July, so we will
work along, I’m sorry if I have some delays at times, but
NK: No, no. It’s totally fine.
AA: But, you know, it will go much more faster after June and July.
NK: Right.
AA: Okay?
NK: Ok.
AA: Perfect. I think, as a first step, just send me these three articles and a summary of what you
have done so far.
NK: Okay, yeah. I’ll… yes, I will.
AA: Okay. Thank you so much, Navya.
NK: Thank you so much. This has been very helpful.
AA: That’s good to know. Thank you. Just keep me posted, how things are. Okay?
NK: Yeah, yes.
AA: Perfect. I’m just going to send you the template.
NK: Ok. Thank you.
AA: Yeah. Alright.
NK: Ok. Have a nice day.
AA: You too, thanks.
NK: Thank you, bye.
AA: Bye.

Reflection
 This was a very helpful interview. I learned a lot about the kind of timeline that I would

be looking at, and I learned about some of the possibilities for my research. I learned a lot of

great tips, like using a published paper as a template for my own so that my paper is in the

format that medical journals like. Dr. Agarwal knows a lot about publishing research papers, so it

was really great to get some advice from an expert. It was also very nice of her to say that I chose

a good topic, because it is easy to want to give up after a long time of what seems like buswork.

Overall, I will use a lot of what I learned during this interview as I proceed with my paper. After

having done a few interviews already, this one was fairly easy to prepare for, which was very

nice.