FSPH Magazine Spring/Summer 2014

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SPRING/SUMMER 2014

PUBLIC HEALTH The UCLA Fielding School of Public Health Magazine

The Solution Intelligence. Creativity. Passion. Commitment.

Our students are changing the world.

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dean’s message THE PUBLIC HEALTH CHALLENGES we face, both at home and abroad, are formidable. Globally, far too many deaths can be attributed to preventable or addressable factors — from inadequate living conditions and environmental hazards to physical inactivity and poor nutrition. In the United States, we rank last among high-income countries in preventable deaths. Threats such as natural and intentional disasters, emerging infectious diseases and climate change demand increased attention, and traditional public health concerns aren’t going away.

Nonetheless, every day I spend as dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health leaves me optimistic about the future. The reason is our students. The intellect, passion, and boundless energy they bring to their studies and fieldwork fills me with hope. When I see their commitment to building a healthier world and learn how each of them is already making an impact, I am convinced beyond a doubt that with these women and men leading future public health initiatives locally and globally, no challenge is insurmountable.

In May, we launched a major fundraising effort for the Fielding School, tied to the UCLA Centennial Campaign. Our top priority: obtaining student fellowship support. For so many of our students, public health education is difficult – or impossible – without financial assistance. As much as they yearn to make a difference in the world, the prospect of graduating with a large debt burden relative to their projected income in public service can’t be ignored. These economic concerns tend to weigh most heavily on students from the very communities that most need public health professionals. We need to change this equation. Our goal is to provide full tuition for outstanding applicants to our school’s MPH program, because cost should never deter gifted and dedicated young people from going into public health.

This issue of our magazine is dedicated to the Fielding School students. As you read about some of them – what brought them here, the impact they are making and their plans for the future – you will understand why I am energized every day by these remarkable individuals, and why we are determined to support them as they pursue their dreams.

Jody Heymann, MD, PhD Dean

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2 THE SOLUTION

In Fielding School classrooms and in communities near and far, students are acquiring the tools they will use to make a difference in our world.

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features PUBLIC HEALTH AND THE ARTS

4 Creative License Ideally situated in the world’s entertainment capital, the Fielding School prepares artistically inclined students to captivate audiences with public health messages.

PATH TO FSPH

9 Why I Chose Public Health For these Fielding School students, the decision to pursue an MPH is intensely personal.

THE MILITARY AND PUBLIC HEALTH

12 Service Calls The military has brought vastly different experiences for three current Fielding

standards 31 school work 35 student awards

School students and a 2013 graduate, all of whom are committed to serving communities through public health.

CLIMATE CHANGE

16 An Atmosphere of Collaboration FSPH doctoral students have armed L.A. County Department of Public Health decision makers with vital information on the projected health effects of climate change – and helped develop strategies to address them.

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

20 Chemical Reaction As a White House intern, Alison Winje brought her public health perspective to the administration’s response to the West, Texas, fertilizer plant explosion.

GLOBAL INNOVATION

21 Addressing Vaccine Waste Immunization campaigns save lives but create environmental concerns, particularly in low-income countries. Claire Dillavou offers a potential solution.

GLOBAL HEALTH

22 Fighting Disease in Remote Territory As leaders of a vital epidemiological study in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, two PhD students have overcome challenges unlikely to be found in any textbook.

ON THE COVER:

HEALTHY CAMPUS

24 Acting Locally Putting their classroom lessons into practice, FSPH students are spearheading health-promoting changes at the school and across the UCLA campus.

SERVING THE COMMUNITY

28 Bringing Attention to Homeless Clients Public health is critical to addressing the needs of homeless and indigent individuals, and to tackling the root causes of homelessness. Through an undergraduate course they teach and partnerships they have forged with students across campus, FSPH students are delivering for a population too often ignored.

Members of the FSPH student group Students of Color for Public Health. Back row, l. to r.: Kevin Milani, Alan Chen, and Claudia Vargas.

Middle row, l. to r.: Elia Salazar, Dan Huynh, Jimmy Tran, and Eduardo Zamora. Front row, l. to r.: Francisco Espinoza, Asya Spears, and Stephania Olamendi. Cover photo by Shweta Saraswat.

PHOTOGRAPHY: Shweta Saraswat: TOC: photo for article on p. 9; p. 4; p. 5: portrait; p. 6: portrait; pp. 7-11; p. 13: portrait; p. 14: Stajura portrait, Lopez portrait; p. 20: portrait; p. 21: portrait; pp. 23, 25-27; p. 29: classroom; p. 31: herb garden, partnerships, Godwin; p. 32: Prelip, Ponce; p. 33: National Public Health Week; p. 37: portraits; Margaret Molloy: TOC: photo for article on p. 24; pp. 2-3; p. 18: food; pp. 24, 28; p. 29: client; p. 30; p. 32: food swamp, Roemer Award; p. 33: Breslow Lecture; p. 37: portraits; Betsy Winchell: Dean’s Message; Desly Ronnie: TOC banner; Adam Carl Cohen: TOC: photo for article on p. 4; p. 4: inset; p. 8: illustration; Glorille Jackson: p. 15: field photos; Todd Cheney: p. 31: Brilliant; Dirna Mayasari: back cover; © iStock: p. 7: wheelchair silhouette; p. 16: illustrations; p. 17; p. 18: LA aqueduct, post-it notes, mosquito, deer tick; p. 19; p. 21: illustration; p. 22: map of DRC; © Corbis: p. 20; COURTESY OF: Amy Zaycek: TOC: photo for article on p. 12; p. 12; p. 13: field photos; Anne Rimoin: TOC: photo for article on p. 22; p. 22: top left; Sonja Perryman: p. 5: onstage and insets; CollegeHumor.com: p. 6: Hugh Jackman inset; FunnyOrDie.com: p. 6: screenshots; Mike Stajura: p. 14: field photos; Jaime Lopez: p. 14: field photos; Harmony Larson: p. 15: portrait; Hilary Godwin: p. 16; Carib Nelson/PATH: p. 21: vaccine vials; Reena Doshi and Nicole Hoff: p. 22: field photos; Alan Chen and Kevin Milani: p. 27: illustration; Oxford University Press: p. 34: Disability and Equity at Work, Ensuring a Sustainable Future; Sage: p. 34: Evaluation Fundamentals; Springer: p. 34: Public Health Informatics and Information Systems; Institute of Medicine: p. 34: Delivering High Quality Cancer Care; Wiley: p. 34: Changing the U.S. Health Care System; European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies: p. 34: United States of America: Health System Review

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Fielding School students have been a consistent source of support for the homeless and indigent population of West Hollywood for 15 years.

To read more about the Mobile Clinic Project at UCLA, which was established by FSPH students in 1999, see page 28.

Jody Heymann, MD, PhD Dean Carla Wohl Assistant Dean of External Affairs

Carla Denly Director of Communications and Executive Editor Dan Gordon Editor and Writer Martha Widmann Art Director Shweta Saraswat Communications Officer and Photography Editor

E D I TO R I A L B O A R D Haroutune K. Armenian, MD, DrPH Associate Dean for Academic Programs; Professor in Residence, Epidemiology; Thomas R. Belin, PhD Professor, Biostatistics; David D. Clark Assistant Dean for Student Affairs; Hilary Godwin, PhD Professor, Environmental Health Sciences; Pamina Gorbach, DrPH Professor, Epidemiology; Moira Inkelas, PhD Associate Professor, Health Policy and Management; Richard J. Jackson, MD, MPH Professor and Chair, Environmental Health Sciences; Michael Prelip, DPA Associate Dean for Practice Across the Life Course; Professor in Residence, Community Health Sciences; Beate Ritz, PhD Professor and Chair, Epidemiology; May C. Wang, DrPH Professor, Community Health Sciences; Zuo-Feng Zhang, MD, PhD Associate Dean for Research; Professor, Epidemiology; Frederick Zimmerman, PhD Professor and Chair, Health Policy and Management; Masako Horino and Willetta Waisath Co-Presidents, Public Health Student Association; Beatriz Solis, MPH ’96, PhD ’07 President, Public Health Alumni Association

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The Solution In Fielding School classrooms and in communities near and far, students are acquiring the tools they will use to make a difference in our world.

THEY COME from diverse neighborhoods and dozens of countries, bringing with them life experiences as wide-ranging as their reasons for choosing public health. They learn from faculty who are leading experts in their areas of study, from practitioners in the field, and from the populations they intend to serve.

On their way to a Fielding School degree, they gain the knowledge and practical skills that will enable them to join with other professionals and communities to effect change and transform health.

At the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, we believe the solution to a better world is embodied in our talented and committed students, such as those introduced on the pages that follow. United in purpose, they have resolved to use the powerful tools of public health to improve the lives of countless individuals, many of whom they will never meet. They come here to learn, and in the process of doing so they teach and inspire us all.

UCLA Fielding School of Public Health Home Page: www.ph.ucla.edu E-mail for Student Application Requests: app-request@admin.ph.ucla.edu UCLA Public Health Magazine is published by the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health for the alumni, faculty, students, staff and friends of the school. Copyright 2014 by The Regents of the University of California. Permission to reprint any portion must be obtained from the school. Send request to communications@ph.ucla.edu.

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PUBLIC HEALTH AND THE ARTS

Creative License

Ideally situated in the world’s entertainment capital, the Fielding School prepares artistically inclined students to captivate audiences with public health messages.

The stage was where Sonja Perryman felt free. “I always had all of this creativity bottled Above: Fielding School doctoral student Adam Carl Cohen uses animation, among other media, in an effort to increase awareness about important health issues.

up inside of me,” she explains. “Starting as a teen, theater became my outlet – a way to express myself.”

Raised by her single father, first in Los Angeles and ultimately in Atlanta, Perryman ventured to New York City to study acting at NYU. After earning her degree she had no trouble finding work, both on stage and in commercials. “I was making a good living, and I was happy,” she recalls. That changed the day Perryman was notified that her father had taken ill.

Some of Perryman’s favorite childhood memories were of carefree moments in the kitchen with Austin Perryman, a chef with a passion for helping others. “He would bring me with him every week to feed homeless people, and we even took some of them in,” Perryman recalls. Her father had struggled with his weight and had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, but Perryman never even considered that this pillar of strength and vibrancy could have his life cut short, until the day she learned he had been hospitalized with severe sepsis – a life-threatening complication of an infection. The illness was traced to a minor wound that never properly healed because of Austin Perryman’s diabetes and unmanaged blood sugar. He died several weeks later. Sonja Perryman knew her father’s death was entirely preventable.

Acting began to feel empty; she yearned instead for a career that would honor her father and his commitment to service. By accident, Perryman discovered public health when she accepted a position teaching nutrition to fourth and fifth graders in South Los Angeles. “The minute I stepped into that classroom, I knew what I wanted to do,” she says. “If I could get children in underserved areas to eat healthy and exercise for life so that they never got type 2 diabetes, that would be my life’s work.”

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“I didn’t have to just tell them why they should care about nutrition.

We could explore it together through theater.”

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But Perryman also realized she didn’t have to leave her theater skills behind. She engaged her students in acting games as a way to promote the value of healthy eating. “It helped get them excited about the topic,” says Perryman, now an MPH student at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

“I didn’t have to just tell them why they should care about nutrition. We could explore it together through theater.”

Public health professionals know what it takes to be healthy, but efforts to convey that knowledge to communities and policy makers don’t automatically result in the desired outcomes. For a profession in which successfully communicating health messages to diverse populations is essential, Perryman and other Fielding School students who possess creative talents are finding that their skills are not only transferrable, but in demand.

“Public health has made tremendous advances over the years, but to take the next leap, we have to get much better at communicating with people in

ways that are meaningful to them,” says Sandra de Castro Buffington, founding director of the Fielding School’s Global Media Center for Social Impact (GMI), which aims to increase awareness of and action on important health issues by harnessing the storytelling power of television, film and new media through collaborations with writers, directors and producers. “When we have students who are grounded in public health principles but also have skills that enable them to engage and entertain, that’s a winning combination.”

“In public health we often compete with major marketing companies with huge budgets that know how to tell a story and are promoting exactly what we’re against,” says Adam Carl Cohen, a Fielding School doctoral student who creates films aiming to improve health behaviors – and whose original short animation “What in the Health Is Public Health” introduces the profession to those outside it. “We have the facts and the science, but we don’t

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Sonja Perryman

Clockwise from above left: Sonja Perryman on stage; in her current role as an FSPH student; with her late father, Austin Perryman; Austin Perryman with awards he earned for his work as a chef; students at a South Los Angeles elementary school where Sonja Perryman taught nutrition; Perryman with two proud students who completed her program.

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Below: Jill Donnelly once made her living as a comedic actress and stage performer, with credits that include a CollegeHumor original short with actor Hugh Jackman (right inset). While pursuing her MPH at the Fielding School, she has continued to perform and teach comedy as a parallel career.

h ave the artistic ability or marketing savvy to effectively improve health behaviors.”

As a child, Cohen would take his father’s Hi8 video camera and make crude claymations by hitting the camera’s on/off switch. He also loved to doodle but considered his art nothing more than a hobby as he began his undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley.

Cohen started as a math major before stumbling upon public health – an introductory course on the topic was offered at the right time slot on his schedule. On the first day, the professor wrote something on the overhead projector that Cohen will never forget: “College will make you sick.” Cohen learned for the first time about the impact of the social and physical environment on health. He was hooked.

After earning his MPH at the Fielding School, Cohen was applying to the school’s PhD program when it occurred to him that he might be able to intertwine his hobby with his career. The Department of Community Health Sciences required a doctoral minor – four courses taken outside of the school.

Students typically opted for the likes of sociology, psychology and urban planning; Cohen chose film.

“So many public service announcements and social

marketing campaigns created by public health fall short,” he explains. “I thought maybe I could learn a thing or two about marketing a great story.”

Cohen points out that in the new media environment – with vastly cheaper production costs and the ability to post content online – exorbitant budgets that once worked against getting public health messages out are no longer as much of a barrier.

“We no w have the tools to reach people that easily rival marketing campaigns produced by mainstream media,” Cohen says. “We need to find ways to cut through the campaign clutter and tell stories that people want to hear – stories that also happen to promote positive health behaviors.” Cohen, whose focus is in sexual and reproductive health, hopes to do his part by engaging viewers through digital media storyte lling.

At first, Jill Donnelly figured she should hide her previous life.

Donnelly had made her living being funny – doing sketch and improvisational comedy on stage as a regular member of Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York and Los Angeles, as well as performing for Funny or Die, CollegeHumor, and other online and TV outlets. Now she was an MPH student at the Fielding School, looking to develop

“Improv and sketch comedy are extremely team-driven. In public health, where you need to work well in teams, that orientation is very useful.”

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Jill Donnelly

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skills that would enable her to address problems of access to care for vulnerable populations. And there was nothing funny about that.

Public health had always interested Donnelly – she even briefly worked as a Medicare patient advocate. But she loved to perform, and was good at it.

Almost immediately upon moving to New York City after college, Donnelly was cast in a musical theater tour. After a few ye ars of musicals she found comedy. “It was exciting to me because, particularly with improv and sketch, you could be creative and use your brain as well as your performance ability,” she explains.

Donnelly moved to Los Angeles and continued to pursue comedy, but at some point it wasn’t enough. “People say to do what you love, and performing is my favorite thing in the world,” she says.

“But the lifest yle – the unsteady income, the need for self-promotion, the lack of control over your own career path – made me unhappy.” Public health still held appeal, and with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, it seemed like an exciting time to make the change. So Donnelly enrolled at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

During her experience as an intern at L.A. Care Health Plan in the summer after her f irst year in the MPH program, Donnelly began to realize that her comedic and performing skills could be an asset in her new career. “I felt sort of sheepish about it, but the people at L.A. Care loved it,” she says. “I was focused, but I could also bring some levity and they valued that. Improv and sketch comedy are extremely teamdriven. In public health, where you need to work well in teams, be flexible, and build off of other people’s ideas, that orientation is very useful.”

Alina Palimaru never envisioned herself as a filmmaker, nor did she consider the possibility that an entertainment-oriented medium might serve as a vehicle through which she could make an impact on the public health issue that matters most to her.

Palimaru grew up in Romania and was an undergraduate studying history, politics a nd communications at Drexel University when she returned to her hometown for a visit during winter break, 2006.

There she made plans to attend the opening of an art gallery with her friend Corina. It was to be Corina’s first outing in more than a year after being confined to a wheelchair following a car accident, and she was excited. But upon arrival, Corina was confronted with a flight of narrow steps up to the public reception. “The lack of the simplest of wheelchair accommodations ruined Corina’s evening and opened my eyes to my native country’s lack of consideration for the basic needs of disabled people,”

“An academic foundation is important, but it can also be extremely beneficial to reach a larger lay audience in a more creative way.”

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Alina Palimaru

Palimaru recalls. She expressed her outrage through an editorial in the local newspaper, but was disappointed by the lack of response.

After college, Palimaru held several public affairs positions in Washington, D.C., and started her own research firm before moving to London to continue working on policy research-oriented projects. But she never forgot about her friend’s disappointment, or about the many people in other countries who are marginalized by a lack of accommodation for their disabilities. In 2010, Palimaru met a film director who offered her the role of associate producer on “From Darkness into Light,” a film about coming to terms with a spinal cord injury. The film explains the nature of the injury, describes types of care, and provides patient insights and coping strategies. Neither a scripted story nor a documentary, it belongs to what Palimaru describes as an emerging genre called health care knowledge transfer – conveying complex medical topics in an accessible and compelling way to inform and empower patients and complement their face-to-face consultations with their physicians.

The film was so well received by health care providers and patients alike that Palimaru decided she had found her niche. “For the first time in my career, I realized that my work could really move

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As an associate producer on films for patients with disabilities, Fielding School doctoral student Alina Palimaru seeks to convey complex medical topics in an accessible and compelling way to inform and empower patients.

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journals. An academic foundation is important, but it can also be extremely beneficial to reach a larger lay audience in a more creative way.”

“We need to find ways to cut through the campaign clutter and tell stories that people want to hear – stories that also happen to promote positive health behaviors.”

–

Adam Carl Cohen

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more photos & videos ph.ucla.edu

people,” Palimaru says. She went on to collaborate with the same director on other productions, including a comprehensive film on wheelchair provisions (vital to a user’s long-term wellbeing).

She has also co-written a new film, currently in post-production, that explains the legal rights of disabled people in the UK. Palimaru is now a student in the Fielding School’s PhD program, where she is working on a film in the same genre with Dr. Frederick Zimmerman, professor and chair of the school’s Department of Health Policy and Management.

“Knowledge Is the Start,” the short film’s working title, will introduce the school’s Center for Health Advancement to a wide audience of Los Angelesarea stakeholders as it emphasizes the importance of the center’s research in effecting change in the city’s future h ealth.

“There is a tendency among some experts to look down upon the use of an entertainment medium for serious health issues,” Palimaru says. “But I came to realize that when you have carefully crafted and vetted content, with clever use of graphics, animation and live-action footage, it can be a very effective health education tool. Public health research findings are communicated mostly in the realm of academic

As Adam Carl Cohen sees it, public health can take three approaches to influencing entertainment media. One is legislative – banning tobacco ads, forbidding alcohol from being consumed on TV commercials, requiring characters in kids’ shows to wear motorcycle and bike helmets. Another is to work with content creators in weaving important public health messages into the plots of popular programs and films. Then there’s the route Cohen plans to take – public health professionals as the content creators themselves. “Do it the way you want to do it,” he explains. “Find talented people and work with them to make something that draws in viewers because it’s entertaining, but also sends important messages.”

Too often, Cohen argues, public health media messages have taken on a didactic tone. “If you look at the old advertisements like they use on ‘Mad Men,’ none of those would work today,” he says. “No one is going to buy a drink just because you tell him it tastes better. In the same way, you can’t just tell people they might die if they don’t get a flu shot.”

An introduction to public health course cotaught by Cohen through UCLA Extension is what convinced Jill Donnelly to enroll in the Fielding School’s MPH program. She had barely started her coursework when her old career came knocking.

“All of a sudden I’m booking all of these acting jobs,” she says, laughing. There were parts in the Netflix return of ‘Arrested Development’ and the HBO series ‘Hello La dies.’ Donnelly was getting more calls to appear in online sketches for Funny or Die and CollegeHumor, and she continued to accept invitations to perform regularly at Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles, where she also teaches improv comedy. On top of her coursework, Donnelly also found time to write a song, “The Public Health Connection,” which depicts the power of public health with her characteristic humor. Donnelly’s performance of the song last year at the annual Fielding School of Public Health Talent Show, sponsored by the school’s Reproductive Health Interest Group, earned her a first-place finish.

Needless to say, she no longer sees the need to hide her comedic skills. “My public health job will be the priority,” Donnelly says of her future plans.

“But entertainment can be a parallel career. And ideally, I’ll find a way to combine the two.”

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PATH TO FSPH

elia salazar

“I strive to be a voice for those who are unable to speak up.”

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. once said, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” Growing up in southeast Los Angeles, I experienced this inhumanity. My parents worked in hazardous factory settings in jobs that involved repetitive motions, heavy machinery and chemical exposures. They labored long hours with short breaks in stressful occupations, constantly worrying about becoming injured or ill.

Translating for them in medical clinics, I saw the disconnect between doctor and patient in the form of language barriers and cultural insensitivity. When I was sick, lack of health insurance meant that we depended on the services of a local clinic, or on homemade remedies.

I was the first person in my family to go to college, and now I am pursuing a master’s degree. In the community in which I grew up, many of my peers have seen their hopes for a college education derailed by issues such as teen pregnancy, drugs, and incarceration. As a role model and ally for my community, I strive to be a voice for those who are unable to speak up. With my MPH, I want to fight to make sure people in all underserved communities have equal opportunities to prosper, and to be part of eliminating the shocking and inhumane injustices I have seen.

WHY I CHOSE PUBLIC HEALTH For these Fielding School students, the decision to pursue an MPH is intensely personal.

“I want to help make the world a place in which a child’s health status is not a reflection of his or her socioeconomic status.”

PRIOR TO ATTENDING UCLA, I worked extensively with youth in underserved communities throughout Northern California. My experiences varied, from mentoring and providing academic support to serving the community as a health educator. But I saw something similar wherever I went: high rates of adolescent obesity. This realization ignited a fire in me to create change.

In 2011, I took my first step in addressing the issue as a health educator in East Oakland. I created Healthy Kids on the Move, an after-school enrichment program designed to encourage healthy eating and physical activity among school-aged children. In facilitating academic classes that engaged, educated, and empowered children to make healthier choices, I witnessed the power of public health. I saw the extent to which children are products of their environment, and how growing up in resource-poor neighborhoods had shaped their ideas on nutrition and exercise.

These experiences solidified my decision to pursue an MPH at UCLA. I want to help make the world a place in which a child’s health status is not a reflection of his or her socioeconomic status, race, gender or neighborhood. Public health gives me an opportunity to address the issue of adolescent obesity on a grand scale.

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ejiro ntekume

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WHY I CHOSE PUBLIC HEALTH

“I plan to work to ensure that immigrants, including those who are undocumented, receive basic health care services.”

Claudia Vargas WORKING AT THE FEMINIST MAJORITY FOUNDATION in Los Angeles after college opened my eyes to the importance of access to reproductive health services, especially in underserved communities. I was outraged to learn about women who had to drive many miles to get a legal abortion, and about legislation that would force women to have ultrasounds or to wait 24 hours before having an abortion. I applied to the Fielding School with the goal of working in the Latino immigrant community to increase access to reproductive health services, but I now realize that the underlying problem is broader – it is lack of access to basic health care.

Coming from a Mexican immigrant family and knowing people who are undocumented, I have seen the effects of not having health insurance.

Without primary care doctors and regular check-ups, my family and my community relied on free clinics for health needs as they came up. In the absence of such basic access, people can’t be expected to be knowledgeable about reproductive health, or to seek important reproductive health services.

As the Affordable Care Act goes into effect, millions will gain access to health insurance, but many will remain without it. With an MPH I plan to work to ensure that immigrants, including those who are undocumented, receive basic health care services.

“Having been a terrified young adult who was pregnant in my first year as a college undergraduate, I can relate to life-changing events and empathize with people at vulnerable points in their lives.” natalie sanchez FOR THE LAST 12 YEARS I have dedicated my career to transforming the way HIV prevention is delivered and perceived.

As the HIV prevention manager at AltaMed, I created and led some of the largest and most successful HIV campaigns, and implemented a combination of public health strategies to reduce HIV infections in Southern California. I was writer and creator of the telenovela web series “Sin Vergüenza (Without Shame),” an Imagen Award-winning campaign aimed at reducing HIV shame and stigma in the Latino community; and the Top, Bottom, Vers condom campaign, aimed at empowering gay men to engage in safer sex.

Having been a terrified young adult who was pregnant in my first year as a college undergraduate, I can relate to lifechanging events and empathize with people at vulnerable points in their lives. Being in this field has taught me compassion, tolerance, acceptance, and how best to work with and understand marginalized populations. My personal experience and lessons learned from persons living with HIV have shaped me into a strong and resilient woman and public health advocate.

Having a leadership and management role in public health has enabled me to shape and develop regional programs delivered by dedicated teams of skilled and passionate employees. With the Affordable Care Act bringing dramatic changes to the health care industry, I want to equip myself with the policy and leadership skills to continue leading HIV efforts in this evolving environment. Enrolling in the Fielding School’s EMPH Program in Health Policy and Management was the step I needed to elevate and expand my public health career.

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“I am passionate in my belief that health is a human right.”

I WANT TO BETTER UNDERSTAND how the community in which we live can so profoundly affect our health behaviors and outcomes – and to use that understanding to address Latin American issues around poverty, health, and inequality. Public health will provide me with that knowledge, along with the ability to participate in reducing and eliminating health disparities. Through a focus on the social and environmental factors that play such an important role in health – including food access policies, community structures, climate change, and pollution regulations – I hope to help create and cultivate healthy communities.

I am at the Fielding School to learn from and collaborate with faculty members toward an allinclusive culture of health – in particular, one that addresses the health needs of the undocumented Latino population. I want to contribute to a paradigm shift that will recognize undocumented immigrants’ health needs. Documented or not, all people are entitled to live in conditions that will facilitate positive health outcomes. I am passionate in my belief that health is a human right – and committed to a future of promoting that right for all as a public health professional.

“I am pursuing an MPH as a means of addressing the significant health disparities in my Native American community.”

gabriel pimentel

AS A NATIVE AMERICAN growing up in Los Angeles, I experienced many challenges. Like many Native American families, mine was looked down upon. It was assumed because of my racial category that I would never amount to anything. This type of discrimination, all too familiar to Native Americans, creates barriers to academic success, which is a key predictor of health. Individuals with a college degree eat better and are less likely to involve themselves in risky behaviors. They are more likely to be able to afford quality food and health care.

For the past several years, I have been fortunate to be able to work for Riverside-San Bernardino County Indian Health, Inc., a consortium of 10 tribes that promotes wellness and healthy lifestyles for my people. I have instituted programs to support academic success, prevent disease and risky behaviors, and reduce obesity and depression through exercise. I have seen firsthand how these exercise and movement programs can help teens lose weight, regain self-confidence, and increase academic achievement. Now the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health gives me the opportunity to learn from the nation’s best experts in the field of public health. I am pursuing an MPH as a means of addressing the significant health disparities in my Native American community, in particular those that result from the risky behaviors of our youth. As a Fielding School graduate, I can be a facilitator of change for my people.

Marcie Lee

stephania olamendi

“My mother raised me to value our Hmong culture.

It was her unpleasant experiences that inspired me to go into public health.”

I AM AT THE FIELDING SCHOOL because of my mother.

For as long as I can remember, she struggled with a health system that failed to provide the type of culturally competent care that could have prevented the chronic medical conditions she now suffers from. Although I tried to help, I had a difficult time describing her symptoms to medical providers through translation. I also witnessed insensitivity among these providers to her needs. Doctors laughed at my mother’s concerns over medical premonitions that she took from our cultural shamanistic practices.

My mother raised me to value our Hmong culture. It was her unpleasant experiences that inspired me to go into public health – not only for her, but to address the linguistic barriers and lack of cultural competency in the health care system that work against many in the Hmong community, as well as other misunderstood communities.

Through public health I hope to improve the strategies for disseminating culturally competent health information and programs to communities that experience health disparities, particularly when they are geographically spread out or in rural areas. At FSPH I can gain the skills I need to alleviate the health informational shortages and barriers that afflict marginalized communities like my own.

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THE MILITARY AND PUBLIC HEALTH

Service callS

The military has brought vastly different experiences for three current Fielding School students and a 2013 graduate, all of whom are committed to serving communities through public health.

One is a U.S. Navy nurse who once stood up to the Taliban as part of a successful effort to bring health care to a village in Afghanistan that had been without it for seven years. Another is a veteran of the U.S. Marines who began to appreciate the power of public health during interactions with displaced populations he encountered during the Iraq War – a revelation that eventually brought him to the Fielding School for his MPH. A third was an English major and Disney story-writing intern who never imagined the military would be the place for her, but now finds herself using her FSPH degree as an environ mental health officer supporting the wellness of 150,000 service members at Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton. The fourth joined the U.S. Army at age 17 and was stationed on four continents during a seven-year military career, during which his duties included designing and implementing disaster planning and emergency management policies. Now, he is deepening his knowledge and applying it to civilian comm unities as a Fielding School doctoral candidate.

Above: Lieutenant Commander Amy Zaycek, now a Fielding School MPH student, meets with President Obama at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in 2013.

For three current FSPH students and one 2013 graduate, the military has brought vastly different experiences – and to U.S. Army veteran Mike Stajura, that illustrates one of several important similarities between military service and public health practice.

“Both offer a range of experience and application beyond what many people think,” Stajura says. “Public health can mean so many different things that we

have trouble succinctly explaining it to our families over Thanksgiving dinner. The same is true for the military – it’s part of such a large tapestry that it can’t be summed up through one person’s experience.”

To be sure, the two women and two men featured on the following pages have taken divergent paths. But at their core they share a commitment to service – and to public health.

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When the president of the United States points you in the direction of the Fielding School, you tend to listen.

Lieutenant Commander Amy Zaycek found herself engaged in conversation with President Obama last year during his quarterly visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. It was just days after Zaycek had received her acceptance letter to attend the Fielding School through the Navy’s Duty Under Instruction program, and she was t rying to decide between UCLA and another prestigious institution. “We had about a three-minute conversation, which ended with President Obama saying, ‘I think we just figured out that you’ll be going to UCLA in the fall… good choice,’ ” Zaycek recalls.

The advice from the commander in chief was yet another in a remarkable set of experiences for Zaycek since joining the Navy as an active-duty nurse more than a decade ago. In Djibouti, Africa, she collaborated with the U.S. Agency for International Development on programs for female sex workers, as well as on strategies for preventing HIV/AIDS. In the Kingdom of Bahrain, she served as a clinic manager supporting the health of more than 17,000 U.S. military members annually. At the U.S. Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, Va., she provided health care ov ersight to more than 200 victims of sexual assault, developing a model for the care of victims that was adopted in U.S. Department of Defense instruction.

Deployed to Afghanistan with the U.S. Marine Corps from October 2009 to May 2010, Zaycek managed trauma care for more than 500 coalition forces under austere medical conditions in Helmand Province while training and equipping other nurses for medical t ransport of critical patients. At one point she was summoned as part of a health care team to Now Zad, a village that had gone from vacation spot to ghost town during the war. After a battle in late 2009 flushed out the Taliban, Zaycek’s small team was brought in to assess the health needs of Now Zad’s women and children, who had lacked care since 2002.

“I found myself face to face with members of the Taliban, who stated that they didn’t want us there,” Zaycek recalls. After appealing for help from a village elder, “I won that argument.” Zaycek went on to diagnose diseases and provide care to more than 300 women and children in Now Zad during her two-month stay. The medical and civil affairs teams then developed a sustainable health system for the suddenly revitalized town, bringing in midwives, dentis ts, and other medically trained locals to run a long-vacant clinic.

The experience was among those that made Zaycek realize that as much as she enjoyed direct patient care, she could touch more lives through public health. “In the military, we have to come in like a banshee and we aren’t going to be there forever,” she says. “Through public health I want to continue to help build programs that will su stain after we’re gone.”

“In the military, we have to come in like a banshee and we aren’t going to be there forever. Through public health I want to continue to help build programs that will sustain after we’re gone.” – Amy Zaycek

In her decade-plus career as a U.S. Navy nurse, Amy Zaycek’s wide-ranging responsibilities have included managing trauma care for more than 500 coalition forces in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, where her small team helped to bring health care to a village that had been without it since 2002.

From his time as an undergraduate at West Point, Mike Stajura knew his career would involve service to others. “That was bred into me – it was the mission of the university,” Stajura says. After graduating, Stajura served in the U.S. Army from 1995 to 2002.

It was during that time that he came to appreciate the value of social cohesion and community, an epiphany that eventually brought him to the Fielding School on a path toward a public health career.

When he joined the Army at age 17, Stajura says, he didn’t realize the extent to which he would

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Mike Stajura became interested in disaster planning and response activities during his seven years of service in the U.S. Army.

He is currently a Fielding School PhD student and disaster educator.

“My education here has helped me to make sense of everything I did before, while expanding my skills.”

–

Mike Stajura

end up putting aside his individual concerns for his fellow service members – and they for him. “I had never been in such a supportive social environment,” Stajura wrote in “What Ails Vets Today,” a 2013 article that appeared on Time magazine’s website, in which he argued that many veterans miss the

accountability, cohesion, and sense of purpose upon returning to civilian life. “We learned to think of o thers first.” A similar focus on community and social support at the core of public health is what led Stajura to pursue higher education at the Fielding School, where he is now a PhD candidate focusing on emergency management and disaster preparedness, particularly as it pertains to community-based organizations and social networks.

During his seven years in the Army – serving in Honduras, South Korea, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and on U.S. military bases in Georgia and Texas – Stajura fulfilled wide-ranging duties, but public health was always part of the job. As an officer he implemented health and safety policies, ensuring everything from anti-sexual harassment education to hand washing. As a platoon leader he ensured not only that the soldiers under his purview were equipped for their mission, but that they avoided injury and unsafe behaviors. As a company executive officer he participated in the design, implementation, and evaluation of health- and safety-related programs.

Stajura also became involved in disaster planning and response activities, and he was hooked. At UCLA, during the process of earning a master’s degree in

public policy with a focus on emergency management, he began taking elective courses in the Fielding School-based Center for Public Health and Disasters and concluded that public health’s broader focus and emphasis on social cohesion better suited him. “My education here has helped me to make sense of everything I did before, while expanding my skills,” Stajura says.

As a disaster educator for the Los Angeles Fire Department and American Red Cross, Stajura always ends his talks the same way. “I tell people the most important thing they need after a disaster will not fit in their backpack,” he says. “You can have all the supplies in the world, but in looking at the research, what’s undeniable is that the thing that’s going to help you the most i n getting through a disaster is the person next to you.”

For Jaime Lopez, combat service as a member of the U.S. Marine Corps at the outset of the Iraq War was a harrowing experience that remains etched in his mind. It is also where Lopez first began to appreciate the similarities between his circumstances growing up and those of disadvantaged populations on the other side of the world.

Lopez was born into an immigrant farm-working family, his parents – neither of whom was educated beyond elementary school – drawn from Mexico by

“Within minutes, the whole town knew and there was a huge line – most of them not for first aid, but for more severe health problems that had never received attention.

I didn’t know what public health was, but I knew this was something powerful.”

–

Jaime Lopez

Jaime Lopez’s combat experience as a member of the U.S. Marine Corps during the Iraq War pointed the Fielding School MPH student toward public health.

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economic opportunity. After high school he joined the Marines, serving two tours in Iraq. While following orders as part of the mission, Lopez also found himself empathizing with displaced Iraqis, who reminded him of the mostly undocumented immigrants he knew from childhood. “As part of the infantry, the primary role was to take over the enemy,” Lopez says.

“But there also comes a time when you have to protect those who are most vulnerable.” Lopez remembers seeing Iraqis leaving their homes in fear of being caught in the middle of the conflict. There were children on the streets with no guardians and no place to go.

At one point when the conflict had subsided, Lopez’s unit was asked to help establish a security perimeter to allow for an impromptu first aid clinic within a small village. “The idea was to treat secondary casualties among the Iraqi population,” he says.

“Within minutes, the whole town knew and there was a huge line – most of them not for first aid, but for more severe health problems that had never received attention. That’s when it started to sink in.

I didn’t know what public health was, but I knew this was something very powerful.”

Lopez continues to struggle with the memories of his experiences in Iraq. He still feels for the Iraqis he saw who were displaced. In a single day, he lost 18 of his fellow Marines when his battalion was ambushed in one of the war’s deadliest battles. Like so many combat veterans, Lopez has struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder. But having completed his first year as an MPH student at the Fielding Scho ol – with plans to earn a PhD and address the health needs of immigrant farmworkers – he is finding his way. “Gaining the ability to serve as a voice for those in need through public health has been therapeutic,” he says. “The experience was a double-edged sword, but ultimately the military is what led me to public health.”

When she was an undergraduate English major at UC Berkeley and then a story-wr iting intern at Walt Disney Imagineering, Harmony Larson (MS ’13) never pictured herself in the military. “I was very liberal arts-focused,” Larson says, laughing. “I didn’t see a match.”

That changed after Larson’s brother joined the Marine Corps and began to provide her with accounts of some of the preventable health risks he saw and the need for education of his fellow service members about everything from basic hygiene to sexually transmitted infections. “A lot of people who join are fresh out of high school and living on their own for the first time, and I realized it was important that some of the things that are typically learned in

Harmony Larson (MS ’13) is applying her FSPH education in her current position as an environmental health officer in the preventive medicine department at Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton.

college be taught in the military,” Larson says.

In search of a career path, she began to ponder what had previously seemed unthinkable. “I wanted to apply science and wellness outreach to as many people as possible,” Larson says. “I was looking for something service-oriented. So I ended up joining the service!”

Larson enrolled in the Fielding School in 2011 and left with her MS in Environmental Health Sciences in 2013, funded for her second year by the Navy Medical Service Corps. Today she is an environmental health officer and lieutenant (junior grade) in the preventive medicine department at Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton, which provides health and medical support for the approximately 150,000 service members, families, and employees at the Marine Corps base. Her day-to-day responsibilities range from overseeing food inspections and immunization clinics to providing health education and investigating vi ral or food-borne outbreaks. “Every day is different, which is really nice,” Larson says.

When her brother first raised the possibility of a military career, Larson didn’t realize what that could mean. “I didn’t know about the public health side,” she admits. “I wasn’t aware of all the humanitarian work, and before I began to look into it, I assumed it would be very rigid. But what I’ve found is that b eing creative in problem-solving is an asset.”

Larson’s public health education didn’t end upon graduation. “I still call on some of my Fielding School professors, and I’m grateful for having gotten to know so many diverse students from every department,” she says. “It’s translated well to what I do now, where, as with many public health positions, I need to interact with people from wide-ranging backgrou nds to solve a wide variety of problems.”

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“I didn’t know about the public health side. I wasn’t aware of all the humanitarian work, and before I began to look into it, I assumed it would be very rigid. But what I found is that being creative in problem-solving is an asset.”

–

Harmony Larson

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CLIMATE CHANGE

An Atmosphere of Collaboration

FSPH doctoral students have armed L.A. County Department of Public Health decision makers with vital information on the projected health effects of climate change – and helped develop strategies to address them.

As temperatures rise, precipitation levels fall, and extreme weather events become more frequent, how will the health of Los Angeles County’s 10 million residents be affected?

Climate change isn’t typically framed as a public health issue, but a group of Fielding School doctoral students who have devoted their studies to understanding the potential health effects of the changing weather patterns know that the perils are all too real.

In Los Angeles, the projected effects range from increased air pollution and its impact on people with

respiratory and other chronic ailments to the likelihood of severe water shortages and threats to drinking water quality; from the prospect of diminished agricultural production and food supply resulting from droughts and extreme weather events to the increased spread of diseases carried by mosquitoes, fleas, and ticks as they begin to thrive in new environ-

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ments. The PhD students, under the mentorship of Dr. Hilary Godwin, a professor in the school’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences, are not only studying how climate change will affect health, but are also partnering with local groups to develop strategies to decrease, and in some cases prevent, the harmful effects.

For the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LACDPH), the questions about health impacts of climate change and proactive measures that can address them are far from academic.

Seeking to bolster its climate action plan, LACDPH has worked closely with Godwin and her PhD students to educate staff members about climate change’s health effects and engage them in developing creative but realistic solutions. The FSPH initiative leveraged work performed by a UCLA team headed by Dr. Alex Hall, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences. Hall’s group recently completed high-resolution modeling of temperatures and snowfall in Los Angeles County for the middle and end of the current century.

The 16-part Climate and Health Workshop Series that started last fall and ran through this spring was developed by Godwin and her students, who identified topics of importance, divided them among their areas of expertise, and presented to members of the LACDPH staff. (The work of Godwin and her students was augmented by presentations from additional UCLA experts.) Each workshop was followed by a brainstorming session in which the UCLA and LACDPH participants explored strategies for promoting resilience against the negative effects through current programs and new initiatives.

Godwin, her students and the LACDPH staff are also developing a manuscript detailing the health impacts of climate change and how they can be addressed at the county level.

“These workshops took the complex topic of climate change and broke it up into specific issues relevant to public health staff,” says Charlene Contreras, who directs LACDPH’s climate changerelated efforts as chief environmental health specialist for the Emergency Preparedness and Response Unit.

“This approach was very helpful in framing climate change as a public health issue and educating members of our workforce so they can integrate climate change considerations into their day-to-day jobs.”

“The workshop series has been a wonderful opportunity to open up dialogue and engage both

LACDPH staff and UCLA students,” adds Godwin, who in May was named one of six recipients of the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award. “One big difference between this initiative and other ones nationally is that we are very focused on identifying likely impacts for specific neighborhoods within Los Angeles and using these insights to develop concrete goals to make our communities healthier and more resilient. We had an incredibly diverse group of participants in the workshop series, and their ability to work together to come up with creative solutions to complex problems was truly inspirational.”

Impact on A ir

Higher tem peratures a re a recipe tion in Sou for more o thern Calif zone produ ornia, and ccentrations m a y also incre of particula ase conte matter – and liquid the mixture droplets in of solids the atmosp quality and h e re that also human hea affect air lth. taman School do na Rahma ctoral stud n, the Field e n t w ho presente ing the topic, n d a worksh otes that th op on is raises th cases of c e specter o ardiovascu f addition a lar and resp l as asthma iratory con and chronic d itions such obstructive as well as pulmonary worsened disease, status for p these and e o p le who alre other chro ady have nic illnesse be affected s. Many pe by a projec o p le will also ted increase hotter, drye in wildfires. r climate a “W n ith a d le ss rainfall, more cond our environ ucive to th m e e m nt is ,” Rahman sa problem f o ys. “This w r populatio ill n b s ea in the footh who live d ills, and fo ownwind.” r people

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Impact on Fo od

Impact on Water

Adelaine Two Fielding School doctoral students, sabrina potential and sharona sokolow, gave presentations on water and e chang te clima to health impacts related team issues to general LACDPH staff as well as to the plan. nse respo ht putting together the county’s droug that Los Angeles has relied to a great extent on water with melts from snow in California’s mountains, but itation, warmer temperatures and lower levels of precip ed on there is less snow and the snowpacks once count . faster g meltin are year the in to store water for use later Los ete, concr by ated As an urban environment domin itation Angeles is limited in its ability to store its precip their In through the use of aquifers and ground wells. the workshops, Adelaine and Sokolow emphasized , as water re captu to ways new find to county’s need and n rvatio conse on asis emph well as placing more alternatives such as recycled water.

es e Diseas ks and n r o B r o c n Vect uitoes, ti Impact o insects such as mosqas vectors for trans-

me serve eding virus, Ly nts, can Blood-fe e d ro s est Nile a W ll on s e n a w o h ti enta s suc fleas, as his pres disease n In es, a . s s m a u u e h h e dis d typ rn n a o mitting , b s ru to ir d vec , Hantav nge on explaine disease ate cha an Moy m y li r c b ld f t u o n o cts nty c stude the effe les Cou octoral e d g l n o A o in h s c Sc , pla g in Lo Fielding species climate e g s e in g th n f cha eo is also that the the rang climate e s g a in re g c n cha lly in osquito potentia risk. The ertain m t c a y s b n o n sio roduce pulati transmis and rep new po e y s tl a n re e c u e has freq d to in s Moy. H ite more te b projecte o y n a , s m ement erature , which r-manag er temp species to c rm e a v w g H’s pidly in LACDP a workin more ra to form ting with s ra e ts. o c ic b e a rv ff ll e o se e alth s begun c tting the a ublic he b p m ry o a c n ri s for and vete trategie entify s id to p grou

Los Angeles County relie s on other p for much of arts of Califo its food, but rnia d rought, highe extreme wea r temperatur ther events, es, and other cl impacts are imate chang projected to e compromise duction and agricultural raise food p prorices, Fieldin student tyle g School doct r Watson no oral ted in his pre increased em sentation. “A phasis on lo n cal food pro community duction such gardens a nd as ur ban farming munities bec will help co ome less vu m ln er able to pric natural disas e increases ters,” Watso an d n says. He po strategy carr ints out that ies other he th e al th benefits, access to fr including m esh fruits an ore d vegetable communities s fo r low-incom that have hi e storically lack In addition, ed such op urban agric tio ns. ulture helps gas emissio decrease gre ns through enhouse su st ai na and decreas ble farming methods ed food tran sportation m iles.

The workshop series brought in staff from LACDPH with wide-ranging areas of focus, many of whom hadn’t previously considered some of the potential climate change-related health effects raised by the Fielding School students. “Addressing these issues requires an interdisciplinary effort,” says Bryan Moy, one of the FSPH doctoral student presenters. “With this series we brought in representatives from different programs, with the hope that they will take these presentations and discussions back to their groups. That way, everyone will have a better understanding of these issues and the department can address them in a cohesive way.”

Beyond the benefits to LACDPH staff, the workshops have provided the Fielding School students

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Impact on Vulnerable Populations Climate change is expected to weigh most heavily on groups that already tend to be at higher risk for health problems. Joseph Hoover of the University of Denver, in a collaboration with Fielding School doctoral student tamanna Rahman, presented a spatial mapping analysis showing the overlap between parts of the county projected to be most affected by extreme heat and low -income populations that tend to lack access to air conditioning, or are financially constrained from using it. The analysis pointed to where there is the most need for cooling centers (public airconditioned buildings) and additional resources. Rahman also stressed the importance of resilience-building efforts that focus on the elderly, children, people with limited mobility, and those with chronic illnesses. Such efforts can bring health co-benefits. Planting more trees, for example, not only provides a respite from the heat, but also can improve air quality through reduced carbon dioxide, along with bringing mental health benefits from a greener environment.

with invaluable experience and exposure. “Dr. Godwin always emphasizes the importance of presenting our work to new and diverse audiences whenever possible, including people outside of our area of expertise,” says Moy. “When we do that, it requires us to think critically about how to present our work in a tangible, easy-to-comprehend way.”

Making connections with people outside of the students’ field of expertise can also bring new perspectives that enhance the work, Moy notes. In his case, the workshop series has opened up collaborative opportunities with LACDPH professionals involved in GIS spatial modeling and veterinary public health.

Although the students were the presenters, FSPH doctoral student Sharona Sokolow says the

stem Impact on the Health Sy Adelaine

ral student sabrina Fielding School docto to prepare for the health system presented on the need and hospatient visits to clinics for potential surges in lnerable -income areas, as vu pitals, particularly in low quality extreme heat, poor air groups are affected by now plan ge effects. “Just as we and other climate chan like getting e proactive measures for seasonal flu and tak about need to begin thinking people vaccinated, we facilities re su ge effects and make seasonal climate chan rb the so ab su pport operations to have the supplies and n begu workys Adelaine, who has influx of patients,” sa . ls to address the issue ing with county officia

education went both ways. “It’s one thing for us to be doing the research, but we’re not the ones actually applying it within the county,” Sokolow says.

“I’ve learned a great deal about the implications of my studies from these discussions.”

“Climate change is such an expansive area of study that it can be hard to grasp,” adds Tamanna Rahman, another FSPH doctoral student presenter.

“We’re trying to bring it down to the local level. Yes, it’s a global issue, but it’s going to have impacts that will affect the health of local populations. Working with the county in such a close partnership and knowing that our work is informing actions that will ultimately result in benefits to the community is both challenging and energizing.”

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ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

chemical reaction Alison Winje was in class at the Fielding School on April 17, 2013, the day ammonium nitrate stored at the West Fertilizer Co. in West, Texas, detonated during a plant fire. As a student

As a White House intern, Alison Winje brought her public health perspective to the administration’s response to the West, Texas, fertilizer plant explosion.

Pictured above: Fifteen people died and more than 200 were injured when ammonium nitrate stored at the West Fertilizer Co. in West, Texas, detonated during a plant fire in April 2013.

in the school’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Winje took more than a passing interest in the disaster. What she couldn’t have known was that in a few months she would be helping to craft the federal response designed to prevent future incidents – or that the experience would redefine her career plans.

The explosion in the central Texas farming town was a tragic reminder of the need to address the inherent risks in handling and storing hazardous chemicals, both for the sake of the workers at the plants and for the surrounding communities. Fifteen people died and more than 200 were injured by the blast. Many homes and buildings were damaged, including a public middle school next to the plant that, fortunately, was not in session. A report issued by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board this spring, barely a year after the incident, concluded that it “should never have occurred.”

In the summer of 2013, Winje contributed to the development, review and editing of the federal Executive Order issued in response to the tragedy as an intern with the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security,” signed into law by President Obama August 1, 2013, resulted from a collaboration among a number of federal entities. “The idea was to bring together all of the players responsible for preventing chemical accidents at these facilities and work toward a new process that is more effective and protective,” Winje explains.

As the only intern with a public health background, Winje made sure to emphasize

prevention strategies – in the form of not just effective regulations and inspections, but incentivizing investments in safer products and processes. “Instead of just managing risks in this industry, it’s important to look at how to eliminate these risks in an economically feasible way, without placing a huge burden on the regulatory body,” Winje says. “We need to move from risk management to risk prevention.”

The experience taught Winje the importance of taking into account the perspectives of all key players – the regulators and the regulated, as well as the workers and the community – in formulating policy. “Even if we are thinking above all about public health, we have to understand the economic and political considerations, and be able to effectively dialogue with people who have those interests,” she says.

After her time in the nation’s capital, Winje is eyeing a career in environmental policy.

“Washington, D.C., was an intoxicating experience,” she says. “It was exhilarating to see the White House from my office and have meetings in the White House compound. Policy is what shapes our communities and our day-to-day lives, and it’s exciting to know I can make a major impact by bringing my public health perspective to that process.”

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GLOBAL INNOVATION

Claire Dillavou was in a remote location of Ghana as a World Health Organization consultant for the country’s yellow fever vaccine program when she came across a slew of trash. There were empty vials, needles, and packaging, remnants of a previous immunization campaign. “It struck me that a lot of developing countries don’t have the infrastructure to dispose of this non-reusable trash in a way that isn’t detrimental to the environment and the people who live there,” Dillavou recalls.

Addressing

Vaccine Waste A former Peace Corps volunteer with considerable experience working as an epidemiologist in low-income countries, Dillavou was used to questioning things she saw in the field that didn’t make sense to her, and she began asking senior members of her team why these life-saving public health campaigns couldn’t be accomplished in a more environmentally friendly way. They agreed it was a problem worth addressing, then informed her of funding being offered for such big ideas through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges Explorations initiative. In April 2012, just five months before Dillavou would enter the Fielding School’s PhD program in the Department of Epidemiology, she learned she had received a $100,000 grant for her project, Biodegradable Primary Vaccine Packaging for Developing Countries.

Dillavou points out that immunization campaigns are projected to grow significantly in lowand middle-income countries over the next 15 years as populations increase and new vaccines are introduced. This will generate substantially more glass, plastic, and rubber waste from vaccine containers at a time of diminishing space for landfills and dumps. The burden is particularly great in low-income countries, which typically must absorb the waste management costs with little consideration of the short- and long-term environmental and financial impacts. “These countries don’t have a voice in the research and development agenda for the future of vaccines,”

Dillavou says. “And at the moment it just doesn’t behoove any of the big vaccine manufacturers to invest more in this area.”

Dillavou hopes to help change that mindset with her study. With a UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry, Dr. Thomas Mason, she has identified materials that can be used to form packaging with properties that make it both biodegradable and adherent to the rigid World Health Organization requirements for ensuring that vaccines remain stable under all conditions.

With three-dimensional printing technology, Dillavou redesigned the packaging of a prototype vaccine to use space and material more efficiently, minimizing costs and waste. Mindful of the need to entice vaccine manufacturers to invest in the new technology, Dillavou has paid close attention to cost issues – focusing on materials that are either inexpensive or expected to greatly drop in price if mass-produced.

Not unexpectedly, Dillavou has encountered challenges in executing her plan, particularly given the complex makeup and stability profiles of each vaccine. “It’s easy to see why industry hasn’t invested in this technology – glass vials are cheap, easy, and they work,” Dillavou says.

“But this is an environmental burden for lowincome countries. I can’t say whether biodegradable packaging will take off, but I am more convinced than ever that it’s a good idea, both for vaccines and more broadly.”

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Immunization campaigns save lives but create environmental concerns, particularly in low-income countries.

Claire Dillavou offers a potential solution.

Above: Empty vaccine vials are left in a waste pit in Mozambique.

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GLOBAL HEALTH

Fighting Disease in Remote Territory As leaders of a vital epidemiological study in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, two PhD students have overcome challenges unlikely to be found in any textbook.

Nicole Hoff’s car was stuck in the mud, and the Fielding School PhD student was a long way from home.

Since 2011, Hoff’s classroom has been the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where she and classmate Reena Doshi (who joined her in August 2012) have shared an apartment in the capital, Kinshasa. With generous support from the Faucett Catalyst Fund, their faculty adviser, Dr. Anne Rimoin, has established a training program for her students to gain hands-on field epidemiology experience in low-resource, logistically complex settings such as the DRC – the world’s 11th-largest country, and one of the poorest. Under Rimoin’s tutelage, Hoff and Doshi have helped to implement an epidemiological study covering the entire DRC, including its most remote, difficult-to-reach areas.

Their work regularly takes them to villages with no electricity, refrigeration, running water or “There has been a big push to vaccinate in the DRC outside communication. In a vast country with in recent years. But given the inaccessibility of so much of the relatively few roads – travel essentials include country, it’s hard to know how successful it’s been. Getting to motorcycles, small boats and the ability to cover participate in this study from its conceptualization to the end long distances on foot – covering a few hundred has been so exciting.” – Reena Doshi kilometers can take a full day when you factor in the river crossings and walks through marshes or forests. And if there is a misstep, as when Hoff’s car ventured into unfit terrain, all bets are off.

“Something like 40 people came out from the nearby village and spent eight hours helping to dig our car out and push it through the mud,” Hoff recounts. “They asked for nothing in return.”

Doshi and Hoff are members of a DRC-based leadership team (part of Rimoin’s UCLA-DRC Research Program) tasked with determining the extent to which the DRC population has immunity to vaccine-preventable diseases. Worldwide, immunization against tuberculosis, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, measles, yellow fever and polio, among others, saves millions of lives every year and is among video & the most cost-effective public health programs. But one in five children globally fail to receive the more photos most basic vaccines, and an estimated 1.5 million children die each year from vaccine-preventable ph.ucla.edu

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diseases. The majority of these deaths occur in low-income countries such as the DRC, which besides being one of the world’s poorest nations, has been devastated by war and corruption for much of its 50-plus year history.

“There has been a big push to vaccinate in the DRC in recent years,” Doshi says. “But given the inaccessibility of so much of the country, it’s hard to know how successful it’s been.” Instead of relying on what the child’s mother remembers, which has its shortcomings, the study checks blood samples for antibodies to vaccines that are included in routine immunizations. Rimoin received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to join with other partners in the study, which is being conducted as part of the larger Demographic and Health Survey funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, World Bank, Global Fund, UNICEF and others.

In addition to determining rates of immunity – and potentially identifying geographic areas with low rates that can be targeted in vaccination campaigns – the survey is contributing to the worldwide polio eradication effort.

The Fielding School students have played an integral role in the survey’s planning and implementation, including training survey-takers; supervising them in the field to ensure proper administration of the questionnaires and collection and storage of the blood samples; and working with the Kinshasa School of Public Health and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in coordinating the laboratory analysis. Ultimately, they will analyze data from the study and present findings to the Ministry of Health and other lead organizations.

Many of the challenges they have encountered along the way are unlikely to be covered in any textbook. During the now-completed data collection phase, Doshi and Hoff supervised and frequently joined team members in transporting questionnaires and medical supplies long distances for 2-3 week stays at a village destination (504 sites in all), operating within strict budget constraints. The blood samples that were collected had an expiration date – if they remained in the field too long, they were no longer viable – so considerable coordination was necessary to get the samples to the labs in a timely fashion.

Despite the many obstacles, the survey was completed in February of this year and the research team has begun analyzing the data.

“Getting to participate in this study from its conceptualization to the end has been so exciting,” says Doshi. For someone interested in a

career identifying and controlling the spread of emerging infectious diseases in a global setting, she can’t imagine a better training ground than the DRC, where scant resources and the large swaths of undeveloped, sparsely populated land create the potential for infectious diseases to lie dormant. Nor could Doshi imagine a better

“I came here with little experience outside the classroom. I’m leaving with the confidence that my work can make a big impact on people’s lives.” – Nicole Hoff adviser than Rimoin, whose DRC-based research program, established in 2004, works closely with the Ministry of Health, Kinshasa School of Public Health and DRC National Reference Laboratory to identify emerging infections and improve general disease surveillance and immunization in the country. Rimoin has also given her students – the first two who have been funded to join her DRC research group – freedom to participate in activities outside of her project, and Doshi and Hoff have found time to serve consultancies for the CDC and World Health Organization on studies assessing the efficacy of just-completed measles and polio vaccination campaigns.

“It has been extremely gratifying to watch these two young women blossom into bona fide field epidemiologists, with the skills to design and implement important research studies in logistically challenging settings,” Rimoin says. “Not only have they learned a great deal, but in the context of their training they have contributed significantly to public health in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

Hoff, who like Doshi expects to graduate later this year, knew she wanted to train under Rimoin from her first year as an MPH student at Tulane University, where she read a National Geographic article about the outbreak of monkeypox in the DRC that highlighted Rimoin’s surveillance efforts. “I came here with little experience outside the classroom,” Hoff reflects. “I had never been camping, never been without electricity, and I wasn’t used to not having the Internet at my fingertips when I needed to look something up, much less riding on the back of a moto through the jungle or meeting a minister of health. I’ve gotten to see how ideas are developed and come to fruition, and I’m leaving with the confidence that my work can make a big impact on people’s lives.”

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Since 2012, Fielding School PhD students (top to bottom) Nicole Hoff and Reena Doshi have shared an apartment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s capital city of Kinshasa. With support from the Faucett Catalyst Fund and under the tutelage of their FSPH faculty adviser, Dr. Anne Rimoin, they have gained hands-on field epidemiology experience in the low-resource, logistically complex setting.

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HEALTHY CAMPUS

ACTING

Putting their classroom lessons into practice, FSPH students are spearheading health-promoting changes at the school and across the UCLA campus.

LOCALLY

If you spent any time walking on the UCLA campus this spring, you may have come across a group of students, staff, and faculty engaged in 10-minute exercise breaks.

“Recess Time, Inspired by Instant Recess®,” which was adapted from the nationwide Instant Recess® movement pioneered by the late Fielding School faculty member Dr. Antronette (Toni) Yancey, aims to change the campus culture by promoting physical activity as an easily accessible part of the day. Whether you’re en route to a lecture, taking a break from work or simply touring the grounds, you are urged to join in.

The scheduled fitness routines, part of the UCLA Healthy Campus Initiative (HCI), are led by “health champions” – trained volunteers who serve as wellness resources and ambassadors to their colleagues and classmates. For the Spring Quarter, eight of the 16 UCLA Health Champions, including the group’s coordinator, were Fielding School students.

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FSPH students are spearheading efforts to create a healthier environment at UCLA in ways that go beyond the Recess Time breaks. Craving a snack after all that activity? UCLA has approximately 100 vending machines, but truth be told, some of the options would be considered less than nutritious. Joe Viana, a Fielding School PhD student, thinks you’d choose healthier items such as trail mix, nuts, and air-popped snacks over chips, cookies, and other traditional vending machine fare with just a little encouragement, including having the healthy options at eye level and clearly marked. It’s more than a hunch. In the largest study of its kind on an American college campus, Viana found not only that UCLA consumers were interested in having the healthier items available, but also that stocking them doesn’t hurt sales. Viana’s study results are being used by the Nutrition and Diet group within HCI as it works with UCLA’s Vending Services on identifying optimal inventory. The findings are also being shared with other UC campuses and Pac-12 universities, as well as the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

Even closer to home, FSPH students, staff, and faculty who approach the elevators on any of the school’s seven floors are being advised of a healthier alternative. You can’t hit the “up” or “down” button without encountering a blue and white plastic sign showing a figure walking up stairs and urging you to “Burn calories, not electricity. Take the stairs.” The signs, adapted from similar efforts by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, are the work of Fielding School PhD student Tyler Watson, who is also a graduate student researcher for HCI’s Community and Environment section.

For those who heed the call, a planned stairwell beautification initiative, promoted by the school’s Public Health Student Association, will ensure that the journey is visually pleasant. The stairwell closest to the school’s main entrance will be painted, mural-style, as a strategy to encourage greater use.

All that stair climbing is bound to make you thirsty, and two Fielding School MPH students hope to do something about that, too. Alan Chen and Kevin Milani are leading an effort, in conjunction with the undergraduate organization E3: Ecology, Economy, Equity, to replace the existing conventional water fountain in the main corridor on the Fielding School’s first floor with a hydration station – providing chilled, filtered tap water via both a regular water fountain and

a quick-dispensing bottle filler. The plan – which has received funding from HCI and UCLA’s The Green Initiative Fund – would have both public health and sustainability benefits. “This will make tap water appealing for all while making it much easier to fill reusable bottles,” Chen explains.

The UCLA Healthy Campus Initiative – an integrated campus-wide effort to promote healthy lifestyle choices and develop best practices that can be applied in other communities – embraces core public health principles, so it’s not surprising to find Fielding School faculty and students playing key roles. “We’re working together to create a social movement around health,” explains UCLA Associate Vice Provost Michael Goldstein,

a Fielding School professor who serves as chair of the steering committee for the HCI, which also goes by the name “Live Well.” Two of the five HCI working groups are headed by Fielding School faculty members: Dr. Wendy Slusser oversees the Nutrition and Diet section, and Dr. Richard Jackson heads the Community and Environment group.

Many of the school’s students have also become involved, including Tyler Watson, who assists Jackson in efforts to make UCLA’s physical environment more conducive to healthy choices such as bicycling and walking. “This is a wonderful opportunity to participate in a campus-wide public health initiative,” Watson says. His “Take

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Previous page: As part of the UCLA Healthy Campus Initiative, “health champions” such as Fielding School MPH students Jacqueline Sun (inset, left), the health champion coordinator, and Lonnie Resser (inset, right) have sought to institutionalize 10-minute exercise breaks among UCLA students, staff, and faculty. The scheduled fitness routines are inspired by the national Instant Recess® movement started by the late FSPH faculty member Dr. Antronette (Toni) Yancey.

Above: Fielding School PhD student Tyler Watson has spearheaded the “take the stairs” movement at the Fielding School, placing the signs so that FSPH students, staff, and faculty who approach the elevators on any of the school’s seven floors are advised of a healthier alternative.

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the Stairs” idea stemmed from a New York City initiative that made the signs available for government buildings. The Community Preventive Services Task Force of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended these “point-of-decision prompts” on the basis of mul-

FSPH doctoral student Joe Viana’s vending machine study found not only that UCLA consumers are interested in having healthier items from which to choose, but also that stocking these items doesn’t hurt sales.

tiple studies indicating that they increase the percentage of people choosing to take the stairs rather than an elevator or escalator.

“I thought the public health building would be an excellent place to do this, and that it would go well with the stairwell beautification,” Watson says. “In public health we encourage physical activity, but getting people to make behavioral changes through education alone is difficult.

Modifying the environment can have an impact, whether it’s by widening sidewalks, increasing the accessibility of bicycles and installing bike lanes, or adding visual cues and making stairwells more attractive.”

As part of Joe Viana’s study, 35 of UCLA’s vending machines were stocked with either one or two full rows of healthier options, strategically placed at eye level. Each of the 35 machines was marked with a Healthy Campus Initiative sticker and each of the healthier options was marked with a sticker identifying it as a better choice.

To become an HCI “pick,” an item had to be fewer than 250 calories and contain less than 35 percent of calories from fat, 10 percent of calories from saturated fat, 35 percent sugar by weight and 360 mg of sodium. (UCLA nutritionists made exceptions for a few products that did not

make the initial cut that they judged to be wholesome.) All approved items had to be transfat free. The unconverted machines also contained some of the healthier options, but only about one-third of those found in the HCI-marked machines. “We also tried to make a general pricing differential that encouraged healthier choices overall,” says Viana, noting that the cost of some of the unhealthier items was raised slightly.

Approximately 100 people who bought items from both types of vending machines were surveyed post-purchase in October and November 2013 to get a sense of what motivated their choices, and Viana also analyzed sales data.

Thirty-five percent of the consumers opted for HCI-recommended items at the converted vending machines, vs. 13 percent who did so at unconverted machines. Of those who reported approaching an HCI-branded vending machine without the intent of buying a specific item, 50 percent selected an HCI-approved product; by comparison, just 10 percent who approached an unconverted machine unsure of what to buy left with an HCI-approved product. Financially speaking, revenues and profits from the converted machines during October/November 2013 were no different from revenues during the same period in 2012, indicating that the move toward healthier products didn’t come at the expense of the bottom line, Viana notes.

The sight of hydration stations in campus locations such as the Student Activities Center and John Wooden Center inspired Alan Chen and Kevin Milani – in consultation with Watson, who had previously pursued the idea before coming up against funding constraints – to successfully apply for HCI support to bring such a station to the Fielding School. Chen says he has heard from many students who either don’t like the taste of the water coming out of the traditional fountain or lament the difficulty of using it to refill their bottles. His group is currently seeking additional funding to implement the project.

Converting the Fielding School fountain to a hydration station will send a message that the school promotes consuming water and doing so in a way that is environmentally sound – by reusing bottles to eliminate the waste generated by plastic containers – explains Chen, who also sees community-building benefits. “Hydration stations are the next generation of ‘water coolers,’ where people can spontaneously meet others and chat while filling their bottles,” he says. “This

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would be an opportunity for Fielding School students to mix with each other and with students in the other health-sciences schools who will pass through to use this resource.” After measuring usage and obtaining feedback from users, Chen’s group plans to assess whether there is an unmet need for additional stations in the Center for Health Sciences building.

As health champion coordinator, Fielding School MPH student Jacqueline Sun has sought to institutionalize the 10-minute exercise bursts on the UCLA campus. The Instant Recess® concept on which Recess Time is based, developed and popularized by Yancey, has caught on in schools, workplaces, community events, and places of worship across the country, in part because the routines are fun and accessible to individuals of all fitness levels, but also because they engage captive audiences. Since Recess Time seeks to recruit passers-by to participate in the activities, it has had to overcome predictable social and psychological barriers. “At first, people would see all of these hula hoops and jump ropes in the middle of public spaces and assume this was something that didn’t involve them,” Sun says.

“But because we are in the same places at the same times during the week, people are becoming used to seeing us, and as this becomes more familiar, many are more willing to participate.”

Even for those who don’t join in, the vision of peers taking part in physical activity breaks on well-traveled campus routes sends an important message that exercise is valued at UCLA, Sun notes. That message is reinforced by the health champions, who not only promote Recess Time participation among their peers, but also serve as sparkplugs for those around them. These efforts take many forms, from suggesting walking meetings and taking the stairs instead of the elevator to inviting all classmates to attend workout sessions, as the Fielding School health champions have done.

“Public health is all about wellness and prevention,” Sun says of her leadership involvement in the campus initiative. “As a public health student, this is a great opportunity to participate in the planning and implementation of a public health program. It’s enabling me to change my campus community for the better while seeing the relevance and resonance of my education.”

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Below: Fielding School MPH students Alan Chen (l.) and Kevin Milani (r.) are part of an effort to replace the existing conventional water fountain in the main corridor on the Fielding School’s first floor with a hydration station – providing chilled, filtered tap water via both a regular water fountain and a quickdispensing bottle filler.

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SERVING THE COMMUNITY

Bringing Attention to Homeless Clients Public health is critical to addressing the needs of homeless and indigent individuals, and to tackling the root causes of homelessness. Through an undergraduate course they teach and partnerships they have forged with students across campus, FSPH students are delivering for a population too often ignored.

On a warm Wednesday evening in April, the two populations interacting along the West Hollywood sidewalk present a stark contrast: the young and vibrant public health, medical and undergraduate students who have made the drive from UCLA’s Westwood campus, most of them clad in gray Mobile Clinic Project t-shirts, and about two-dozen men and women looking disheveled and less exuberant than the UCLA group, for good reason – they spend a substantial portion of their time living on the streets.

Graduating MPH student Stephanie Wong (l.), one of three public health coordinators, and public health volunteer Jacqueline Hollada meet with a UCLA Mobile Clinic Project client.

But Jenna Arzinger, a Fielding School MPH student and one of three public health student coordinators for the Mobile Clinic Project at UCLA, has learned that appearances can be deceiving. “Coming here has been eye-opening and humbling,” she says.

“Talking with the clients and hearing their stories, I realize there’s not a big difference between someone who is homeless and myself. So many of them

have just fallen on hard times, circumstances that could happen to any of us.”

Ever since it was conceived and implemented

by FSPH students in 1999, the Mobile Clinic Project has been a consistent source of support for the area’s h omeless and indigent population. Every Wednesday night, student volunteers show up at the same spot on Sycamore Avenue south of Romaine Street as

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part of an effort to address the public health needs of the homeless and indigent population, as well as the public health issues at the core of homelessness. Working in tandem with the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition, which passes out warm meals to the population, the Mobile Clinic Project is currently co-led by UCLA students from the Fielding School and the David Geffen School of Medicine, as well as undergraduates who are prepped for the experience through their enrollment in a required two-quarter course taught by FSPH student instructors.

Operating out of a box truck, the medical students offer basic health care (under the supervision of an attending physician) while accompanied by undergraduate caseworkers, who assist with the social history. Fielding School students fill a variety of roles to ensure the continued success of the Mobile Clinic Project. They survey clients to monitor their changing needs and assess their satisfaction with the services.

They collect data on the clients’ insurance – identifying and addressing barriers to their use of health care resources for which they are eligible, particularly with implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Much of their work occurs off-site. This includes managing the patient assistance program that in some cases provides clients with free prescription medications through pharmaceutical companies; handling logistics involving medical and social service referral sites for the clinic; managing a partnership with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation to provide free HIV testing on site; and working with L.A. County’s Immediate Needs Transportation Program to provide taxi vouchers and bus tokens for clients who need them to get to shelter or m edical appointments. Fielding School students also help to secure funding for the Mobile Clinic Project’s continued operation through extramural grants and private donations. In weekly meetings of the project’s leadership, the public health coordinators work with the medical school and undergraduate coordinators to improve on the services, including pushing for comprehensive care that addresses issue s such as social support, legal aid, and housing in addition to attending to the clients’ immediate health needs.

“Our students continue to be key in the overall leadership of the clinic,” says Dr. Michael Prelip, professor and associate dean for practice across the life course at the Fielding School, who has served as a faculty adviser for the program since its inception.

“Much of what they do is so common to public health – operating behind the scenes to allow the work to occur.”

In CHS 187A and 187B, the two-quarter course required of all undergraduates volunteering at the

“We teach [students] about homelessness from a public health perspective, discuss the population’s health and social needs, and provide the students with skills so they can be effective in their interactions.”

–

May Bhetraratana

Mobile Clinic Project, FSPH students provide undergraduates with what is often their first exposure to public health principles. “A lot of them haven’t had any experience working with homeless clients,” says May Bhetraratana, a Fielding School student in the interdepartmental Molecular Toxicology PhD program and a Mobile Clinic Project public health coordinator who was the CHS 187B instructor this spring. “We teach them about homelessness from a public health perspective, discuss the population’s health and social needs, and provide the students with skills so they can be effective in their interactions.” As part of the course, the undergraduates break into small groups and stage client interviews with each other. They learn the importance of being good listeners, not coming across as condescending or judgmental, and determining whether clients are motivated to change before working with them to overcome obstacles and identify solutions for themselves. Guest lecturers are brought in from UCLA and the community to share their expertise on issues related to homelessness and public health.

The Mobile Clinic Project at UCLA was born in 1999 when directors of the Greater West Hollywood

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Top: May Bhetraratana, a Fielding School PhD student and one of the Mobile Clinic Project public health coordinators, teaches CHS 187B, a course required for undergraduate volunteers.

Immediately above: Bhetraratana with a client at the clinic.

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“The homeless clients are used to people walking past them as if they don’t exist.

Having someone who cares about them, listens to them and treats them respectfully makes them feel better.”

–

Clockwise from above left: Fielding School PhD student and public health volunteer Paul Chandanabhumma, along with PhD student and 2014-15 public health coordinator Jenna van Draanen, meet with a client; Stephanie Wong and Jacqueline Hollada checking supplies; FSPH student public health coordinators (l. to r.)

Stephanie Wong, Jenna Arzinger, and May Bhetraratana.

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Stephanie Wong

Food Coalition (GWHFC), aware that their clients had needs that went well beyond hunger, approached Prelip about getting students involved in meeting some of the health concerns of the area’s homeless and hungry population. With Prelip serving as the initial faculty adviser, two of his students – one of whom, Koy Parada (MPH ’98), continues to serve as an adviser for the project – forged a partnership with GWHFC to pair the food offerings with a much larger effort. Six months into the process, the public health students recruited participation from the medical school and began to develop an interdisciplinary effort that also included undergraduates as caseworkers and law students providing legal advocacy.

Then and now, the Mobile Clinic Project volunteers become accustomed to seeing many of the same faces week after week. It’s a reminder that addressing some of the clients’ most common health concerns – skin and respiratory conditions, joint pain, hypertension, diabetes, sexually transmitted infections – is in many cases easier than breaking them out of the cycle of homelessness. Yet, the surveys

conducted by Fielding School students consistently show high rates of satisfaction wit h the clinic’s services. Stephanie Wong, a graduating MPH student who serves as one of the public health coordinators and was the instructor for CHS 187A last winter, required her undergraduate students to submit weekly journals on their experiences as caseworkers.

“So many of them reported the same thing,” says Wong. “The homeless clients are used to people walking past them as if they don’t exist. Having someone who cares about them, listens to them and treats

them respectfully makes them feel better.” Wong, who plans to go to medical school, says the experience has deepened her own understanding of, and compassion for, society’s most needy members.

Jenna Arzinger won’t soon forget the regular clients she’s gotten to know through the Mobile Clinic Project – clients like the middle-aged blind man who is always accompanied by his female companion. “They’re both homeless, and yet they are two of the most positive people I’ve ever met,” Arzinger says. “She takes such good care of him, but what really got to me was when she told me that she prays for all of us and our families all the time.”

The experience of working with a homeless population as an undergraduate is what convinced Arzinger to pursue her MPH. “This is public health at the most basic level,” says Arzinger, who plans to work in correctional health after graduating this spring. “To be out on the street, working with a vulnerable population at the community level and seeing the effects of what we do…as a public health graduate student, that’s pretty ideal.”

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school work

UCLA MEDAL – Dr. Larry Brilliant received the UCLA Medal, the university’s highest honor, for his landmark contributions to public health and his commitment to making the world a healthier and better place. The medal was presented by Chancellor Gene Block at a celebration held at the Chancellor’s Residence. Brilliant is president and CEO of the Skoll Global Threats Fund, which is working to combat global public health challenges including climate change, threats to water security and pandemics.

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FSPH Launches Partnerships with Schools of Public Health in China

HERB GARDEN – Fielding School students have planted a medicinal herb garden in the courtyard of the UCLA Center for Health Sciences building as part of an effort to raise awareness about the importance of drought-tolerant plants and local produce. The garden includes only native California plants that can grow and thrive in the local environment.

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Nine delegates from three top schools of public health in China visited the Fielding School in April to launch new partnerships in training and research.

The leaders of the three visiting schools – Dean Wen Chen from Fudan University School of Public Health, Dean Qingyue Meng of Peking University School of Public Health, and Dean Feng Chen of Nanjing Medical University School of Public Health – signed memoranda of understanding with FSPH Dean Jody Heymann, symbolizing the commitment of collaboration between FSPH and the Chinese schools of public health.

The signing was followed by a forum addressing public health in China, which included a scientific exchange among the four schools organized by Dr. Zuo-Feng Zhang, the Fielding School’s associate dean for research.

TEACHING AWARD – Dr. Hilary Godwin, professor of environmental health sciences at the Fielding School, was one of six recipients of the 2014 UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award, one of the highest honors given by the UCLA Academic Senate.

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Study Findings Prompt FDA Investigation The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced in January that it is investigating the risk of stroke, heart attack, and death in men taking FDA-approved testosterone products based on the findings of two studies, one of which was co-authored by a Fielding School researcher.

A study by FSPH professor of epidemiology Dr. Sander Greenland and researchers from the National Institutes of Health and Consolidated Research Inc., published in the journal PLOS ONE in January, found a twofold increase in the risk of a heart attack shortly after beginning testosterone therapy among men under 65 with a history of heart disease. The findings, along with a 2013 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggested an increased risk of cardiovascular events, as did several small clinical trials, prompting the FDA investigation.

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Ruth Roemer Social Justice Leadership Award The UCLA Fielding School of Public Health Alumni Association presented community health advocate Loretta Jones with the Ruth Roemer Social Justice Leadership Award at the fifth annual Ruth Roemer Symposium, held at The California Endowment’s Los Angeles office in April.

The award, which recognizes those making a difference in advancing and protecting health in underserved communities or vulnerable populations, is given in honor of the late Ruth Roemer. A member of the Fielding School’s faculty for more than four decades, Roemer made lasting contributions in reproductive health services, environmental health, tobacco control and health services organization.

Jones’ career as a leader in civil rights, health policy and social advocacy has spanned more than 40 years. As the founder and CEO of Healthy African American Families, Phase II, and a selfdescribed “community gatekeeper,” Jones has committed her life’s work to eliminating health disparities and improving health outcomes of those living in the Los Angeles area.

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Prelip Named Associate Dean for Practice Across the Life Course Dr. Michael Prelip, professor of community health sciences, has been named the school’s first associate dean for practice across the life course. In his new role, he will lead FSPH efforts to enhance public health practice opportunities for students, faculty, and alumni – bridging the gap between learning and application, as well as between research and application. Prelip, who joined the Fielding School faculty in 1996, directs the field component of the Master of Public Health (MPH) degree in the Department of Community Health Sciences and is director of the school’s MPH for Health Professionals Program. He has also led numerous National Institutes of Health-funded research and training programs focusing on health disparities.

Ponce Appointed Director of FSPH Center for Global and Immigrant Health Dr. Ninez Ponce, professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, has been appointed director of the FSPH Center for Global and Immigrant Health, effective July 1, 2014. Ponce currently serves as principal investigator for the California Health Interview Survey.

The Center for Global and Immigrant Health includes faculty from every department in the Fielding School, as well as the schools of medicine, dentistry and nursing, and the California Center for Population Research. Participating faculty have active research collaborations in more than 60 countries.

Working with Community Members to Transform a “Food Swamp” Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights community, like many low-income communities across the United States, has been called a “food swamp” – an area where fast food and other unhealthy options are dominant, and nutritious choices are in short supply. But that is changing. The Fielding School and the UCLA Center for Population Health and Health Disparities (CPHHD) joined with local high school students and members of Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights community last December to celebrate the grand reopening of Euclid Market, the third store in the Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles communities to undergo a CPHHD-supported transformation. Instead of prominently placed junk food and beer, the front of the store now highlights healthy options such as fresh fruits and vegetables, bottled water, and nutritious snacks. The conversions, funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health and led by FSPH, are part of a collaborative strategy with community members to change eating habits and reduce disease risk in the community, which is plagued by high rates of obesity-related chronic diseases.

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2014 NATIONAL PUBLIC HEALTH WEEK

To mark National Public Health Week in April, the Fielding School Students of Color for Public Health (SCPH) student group organized a full week of interactive events to engage and energize UCLA faculty, staff and students around public health issues.

The events followed daily themes set by the American Public Health Association and included lectures on bikeability in Los Angeles, food policy and law, and storytelling and public health, as well as panel discussions on emergency response work, mental health and the arts, and what it means to be a public health student.

SCPH also organized the 1st Annual Tour de UCLA bike event in collaboration with the UCLA Bike Coalition and the UCLA Bike Shop, in addition to a Community Emergency Response Training session, meditative yoga session in the UCLA Sculpture Garden, and public health career fair with the FSPH Career Services Office.

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Breslow Lecture Spotlights Public Health Turning Points Dr. Gerald Kominski addressed the Affordable Care Act as a turning point for U.S. health care when he delivered the Fielding School’s 40th Annual Lester Breslow Distinguished Lecture in March. Kominski, professor of health policy and management and director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research at the Fielding School, was also the 2014 Dean’s Distinguished Scholar.

The annual event, held in memory of visionary public health leader, FSPH professor and former dean Dr. Lester Breslow, highlighted the contributions of the FSPH Alumni Hall of Fame inductees, all of whom exemplify the school’s commitment to teaching, research and service. Dr. Emmett Chase (MPH ’90) and Dr. Eva Smith (MPH ’90), who are married, have worked together throughout their careers to address the health needs of the Hoopa Valley Tribe in Northern California and beyond. Kristin Kalla (MPH ’93) of the Trust Fund for Victims, which supports the International Criminal Court in The Hague, has dedicated her career to restoring the dignity of survivors of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in more than 25 countries.

The evening also highlighted Student Writing Competition presentations, in which students from each FSPH department discussed how schools of public health can impact the future of public health and communities worldwide. The five student finalists – Lauren Gase, Evan Shannon, Tessa Verhoef, Gregory Watson, and Maria-Elena Young – each received a $1,000 prize from Molina Healthcare Inc. Shannon also received a $5,000 prize courtesy of the Breslow Student Fellowship Fund after being chosen by a panel of distinguished judges as the overall winner for his call to integrate epidemiology and information technology.

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Honor Roll 2013 The UCLA Fielding School of Public Health is pleased to honor our alumni, friends, students, staff, and foundation and corporate partners whose generosity strengthens the school and keeps it at the forefront of public health education.

Please visit ph.ucla.edu/ honorroll2013 to view the 2013 Honor Roll.

Keep In Touch Visit us online ph.ucla.edu

Faculty Honors RON BROOKMEYER was selected as the 2014 Norman Breslow Distinguished Lecturer in Biostatistics at the University of Washington.

He was appointed to the Board of Reviewing Editors for the journal Science.

RICHARD JACKSON received the Joan H. Tisch fellowship and gave the Joan H. Tisch fellowship lecture at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute in New York. He gave the Herbert Goldenring Lecture at the Yale School of Medicine.

KATE CRESPI was elected president of the International Biometric Society, Western North American Region.

SNEHENDU KAR was awarded a Fulbright-Nehru Distinguished Chair award by the U.S.-India Educational Foundation.

CHANDRA FORD was awarded the Kaiser Permanente Burch Minority Leadership Development scholarship to study barriers to health services.

GERALD KOMINSKI was selected as the 2014 FSPH Dean’s Distinguished Scholar and Lester Breslow Lecturer.

JOHN FROINES received the 2013 Ramazzini Award for his work in occupational and environmental health research and advocacy.

PATRICIA GANZ gave the 2014 Charles A. LeMaistre Lecture in Oncology and Cancer Prevention at the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas.

HILARY GODWIN was awarded a Distinguished Teaching Award from the UCLA Academic Senate.

OLIVER HANKINSON was selected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

JODY HEYMANN was elected to the Institute of Medicine.

Bookshelf ...recent books by UCLA Fielding School of Public Health authors (listed in bold).

Changing the U.S. Health Care System: Key Issues in Health Services Policy and Management, 4th Edition Editor and Co-author: Gerald Kominski Delivering High-Quality Cancer Care: Charting a New Course for a System in Crisis

By Laura Levit, Erin Balogh, Sharyl Nass, and Patricia A. Ganz Disability and Equity at Work

By Jody Heymann, Michael Ashley Stein, and Gonzalo Moreno

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DONALD MORISKY received the Distinguished Career Award from the Public Health Education and Health Promotion section of the American Public Health Association.

SHANE QUE HEE received the Volunteer Group Service Award from the American Industrial Hygiene Association.

MARC SUCHARD was awarded the 2013 Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies Presidents’ Award for contributions to the profession of statistics.

STEVE WALLACE received the 2013 Betty & James E. Birren Senior Scholar Award from the California Council on Gerontology and Geriatrics.

Evaluation Fundamentals: Insights into Program Effectiveness, Quality and Value

By Arlene Fink Pharmaceutical Economics

By William S. Comanor and Stuart O. Schweitzer Public Health Informatics and Information Systems, 2nd Edition Edited by JA Magnuson and Paul Fu, Jr. United States of America: Health System Review

By Thomas Rice, Pauline Rosenau, Lynn Y. Unruh, and Andrew J. Barnes

Ensuring a Sustainable Future: Making Progress on Environment and Equity Editors: Jody Heymann and Magda Barrera

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2013-14 student awards 2013 Volunteer of the Year, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Caleb Lyu Epidemiology

Breslow Student Writing Competition Award

Dean’s Continuing Student Opportunity Award

Evan Shannon Epidemiology

Gabriel Pimentel Community Health Sciences

Burroughs Wellcome Fund Inter-School Training Program in Metabolic Diseases

Stephania Olamendi Environmental Health Sciences

2014 Young Investigator Scholarship for Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections

Yan Song Epidemiology

Claire Bristow Epidemiology

California Wellness Fellowship

Abdelmonem A. Afifi Student Fellowship Claudia Gilmore Gutierrez Community Health Sciences

Academy Health Delivery System Science Fellowship Caroline Thompson Epidemiology

Advanced Quantitative Methods in Education Fellowship Lauren Harrell Biostatistics

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Fellowship Garth Fuller Andrea Sorensen Joseph Viana Adriane Wynn Caroline Yoo Health Policy and Management

AIDS Institute Fellowship Solomon Makgoeng Epidemiology

American Industrial Hygiene Foundation 2014 Lawrence R. Birkner and Ruth K. McIntyreBirkner Memorial Scholarship Calvin Wong Environmental Health Sciences

American Industrial Hygiene Foundation 2014 Northern California Local Section Scholarship Teniope Adewumi Environmental Health Sciences

American Industrial Hygiene Foundation General Scholarship Katherine McNamara Environmental Health Sciences

Amgen Fellowship Adam King Biostatistics

Ann G. Quealy Memorial Fellowship Gabriel Adelman Jeffrey Agner Health Policy and Management

Alexis Cooke Francisco Espinoza Carla Hegwood Jaime Lopez Ian MacKenzie Sonja Perryman Adriana Romero-Espinoza Eduardo Zamora Community Health Sciences Stephania Olamendi Environmental Health Sciences Stephen Lee Health Policy and Management

Carolbeth Korn Scholar Award Maral DerSarkissian Epidemiology

Celia G. and Joseph G. Blann Fellowship Patience Afulani Community Health Sciences Heidi Fischer Biostatistics

Chancellor’s Prize Siavash Banaee Environmental Health Sciences Lisa Barnhill Molecular Toxicology

Charles F. Scott Award Julia Caldwell Elizabeth Evans Community Health Sciences

The China Scholarship Council Tuition Scholarship and Living Stipend Aolin Wang Epidemiology

Clinical Translational Science Institute (CTSI) Training Grant Julian Brunner Anna Davis Sarah Friedman Lauren Gase Charleen Hsuan Jenna Jones Selene Mak Narissa Nonzee Diane Tan Linda Diem Tran Alice Villatoro Health Policy and Management

Competitive Edge Fellowship

Arco Fellowship

Solomon Makgoeng Epidemiology

Tamanna Rahman Lorfreda Viernes Environmental Health Sciences

David Satcher Opportunity Award Sonja Perryman Community Health Sciences

Dean’s Continuing Student Recognition Award Ejiro Ntekume Elia Salazar Claudia Vargas Community Health Sciences Natalie Sanchez Health Policy and Management

Dean’s Global Health Fellowships Laura Baetscher Annie Clarke Natasha Graves Janell Moore Community Health Sciences Claire Bristow Rebecca Foelber Josh Quint Epidemiology Michelle Romero Adriane Wynn Health Policy and Management

Dean’s Leadership Grant Sophia Hur Yonas Lemecha Jonathan Maner Biostatistics Nadia Borchardt Jesse Damon Amelia Defosset Joanna Ekstrom Natasha Graves Nancy Guerrero-Llamas Edith Hernandez Erin Manalo Margot Markman Melissa Medich Mojde Mirarefin Ejiro Ntekume Taylor Schooley Jacquelin Scully Ashley Slight Jacqueline Sun Willetta Waisath Miranda Westfall Natalia Woolley Community Health Sciences Ryan Babadi Morgan Caswell Kriszta Farkas Noelle Watanabe Jessica Yim Environmental Health Sciences Saeedeh Azary Rebecca Foelber Edward Lan Melissa Morales Evan Shannon Epidemiology Danielle Andrews Jonathan Chang Rachel Landauer Michele LaPointe Daniel Lee Lucy Pagel Stephanie Tepper

Diane Webber Partow Zomorrodian Health Policy and Management

Dean’s Outstanding Student Award Qiaolin Chen Biostatistics Jacqueline Torres Community Health Sciences Kristin Yamada Environmental Health Sciences Heather Pines Epidemiology Jeffrey McCullough Health Policy and Management

Dean’s Special Fund for International Internships Dirna Mayasari Janell Moore Community Health Sciences

Delta Omega Honorary Society in Public Health, Iota Chapter Qiaolin Chen Qian Li Priscilla Yen Biostatistics Hsin-Chieh Chang Joanna Ekstrom Jennifer Garcia Emily Heller Samantha Lupinetti Uchechi Mitchell Parichart Sabado Jacqueline Torres Kiyomi Tsuyuki Miranda Westfall Community Health Sciences Samantha Abraham Donna Ferguson Ciara Martin Kristin Yamada Environmental Health Sciences Po-Yin Chang Maral DerSarkissian Zeyan Liew Laura Nasuti Heather Pines Shauna Stahlman Epidemiology Michelle Keller Allison Mangiaracino Stephanie Margolin Julieta Moncada Kathan Vollrath Partow Zomorrodian Health Policy and Management

Delta Omega National Poster Competition Award Angela Chow Epidemiology

Dissertation Year Fellowship Qiaolin Chen Jiaheng Qiu Biostatistics PhuongThao (PT) Le Community Health Sciences Samantha Abraham Environmental Health Sciences Maral DerSarkissian Epidemiology

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Kristin Yamada Molecular Toxicology Geoffrey Hoffman Jeffrey McCullough Sandhya Shimoga Health Policy and Management

Dr. Ursula Mandel Fellowship Pornsak Chandanabhumma Community Health Sciences Shauna Stahlman Epidemiology

Drabkin-Neumann Internships in Global Health Claudia Gilmore Gutierrez Michella Otmar Community Health Sciences

E. Richard Brown Social Justice Award Erryne Jones Health Policy and Management

EMPH Best Business Plan Award Eric Aguilar Justin Cao Peter Freska Health Policy and Management

Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowships Oluwatoyin Fafowora Epidemiology Julie Castaneda Ciara Martin Molecular Toxicology Isomi Miake-Lye Tanya Olmos Health Policy and Management

Faucett Catalyst Fund Fellowship Reena Doshi Nicole Hoff Epidemiology

Fielding Scholar Dan Huynh Environmental Health Sciences

Fielding School of Public Health Nonresident Scholarship Solomon Makgoeng Epidemiology Pornsak Chandanabhumma Community Health Sciences Alina Palimaru Health Policy and Management

Fred H. Bixby Doctoral Fellowship in Population and Reproductive Health Patience Afulani Subasri Narasimhan Community Health Sciences

Fred H. Bixby International Internships on Population and Reproductive Health Claudia Gilmore Gutierrez Natasha Graves Danielle Harris Janell Moore Community Health Sciences

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Furst Award at the 34th Annual American College of Toxicology Conference Julie Castaneda Molecular Toxicology

Future Public Health Leaders Jesse Damon Nancy Guerro-Llamas Margot Markman Melissa Medich Community Health Sciences Zuelma Esquivel Evan Shannon Epidemiology Noelle Watanabe Environmental Health Sciences Danielle Andrews Maria del sol Rodriguez Avila Diane Webber Health Policy and Management

Gates Millennium Scholarship Reena Doshi Nicole Hoff Epidemiology

Genomic Analysis Training Program Michelle Creek Eunjung Han Biostatistics

Graduate Opportunities Fellowship Marcie Lee Jaime Lopez Elia Salazar Emerald Snow Claudia Vargas Community Health Sciences Ana Delgado Mascareñas Environmental Health Sciences Zuelma Esquivel Epidemiology Marina Acosta Ana Leyva-Reyna Alisha Morrow Health Policy and Management

Graduate Research Mentorship Award Lauren Lessard Community Health Sciences

International Clinical, Operational, and Health Services Research and Training Award – China

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Training Grant in Molecular Toxicology

Jie Wu Epidemiology

Michael Davoren Aaron Lulla Ciara Martin Molecular Toxicology

Judith Blake Memorial Fellowship Zeyan Liew Epidemiology

Juneal Marie Smith Fellowship in International Nutrition Masako Horino Community Health Sciences

Maternal and Child Health Training Program Kimberly Narain Tanya Olmos Joseph Viana Health Policy and Management

Max Factor Family Foundation Summer Internship Fund Karen Roque Community Health Sciences

Ministry of Health Singapore’s Communicable DiseasesPublic Health Research Grant Award 2013 Angela Chow Epidemiology

Molina Healthcare Student Competition Writing Award

National Institute of General Medical Sciences Predoctoral Training Program (CCPR) Hector Alcala Tabashir Sadegh-Nobari Community Health Sciences

National Institutes of Health Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award Jacqueline Torres Community Health Sciences

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health - Southern California Education and Research Center Fellowship Teniope Adewumi Siavash Banaee George Brogmus Katherine McNamara Kevin Milani Calvin Wong Jessica Yim Nu Yu Environmental Health Sciences

Greg Watson Biostatistics

NIMH - Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award

Maria-Elena Detrinidad Young Community Health Sciences

Heather Pines Epidemiology

Tessa Verhoef

Philip & Aida Siff Award

Environmental Health Sciences Evan Shannon Epidemiology Lauren Gase Health Policy and Management

Monica Salinas Internship Fund in Latino and Latin American Health

Samantha Abraham Environmental Health Sciences Andrew Siroka Health Policy and Management

President’s Volunteer Service Award Alan Chen Environmental Health Sciences

Francisco Espinoza Community Health Sciences

Raymond D. Goodman Scholarship

Bryan Moy Environmental Health Sciences

Rebecca Foelber Epidemiology

Danielle Harris Community Health Sciences

Karleen Giannitrapani Isomi Miake-Lye Andrew Siroka Health Policy and Management

Monica Salinas Opportunity Award

Graduate Summer Research Mentorship Fellowship Stephanie Albert Matthew Beymer Anne Fehrenbacher Imelda Padilla-Frausto Community Health Sciences Olivia Ellis Bryan Moy Environmental Health Sciences Tanya Olmos Andrew Siroka Health Policy and Management

Health Policy and Management Alumni Association (HPMAA) Award Michelle Chen Stephanie Tepper Health Policy and Management

Stephania Olamendi Community Health Sciences

Muslim Aid UK South East Asia Regional Office Integrated Emergency Response Program Dirna Mayasari Community Health Sciences

National Institute on Aging Predoctoral Training Program (CCPR) Danielle Dupuy Uchechi Mitchell Community Health Sciences

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Predoctoral Training Program (CCPR) Anne Fehrenbacher Goleen Samari Community Health Sciences

Charleen Hsuan Health Policy and Management

Rheumatology Research Foundation Health Professional Research Preceptorship Priti Prasad Molecular Toxicology

Samuel J. Tibbits Fellowship Bryan Moy Environmental Health Sciences

Singapore Clinician Investigator Bronze Award, Singapore Health & Biomedical Congress 2013 Angela Chow Epidemiology

Society of Toxicology Travel Award Kristin Yamada Molecular Toxicology

Society of Neuroimmune Pharmacology Early Career Investigator Award Julie Castaneda Molecular Toxicology

Southern California and Orange County Industrial Hygiene Association Student Scholarship Teniope Adewumi Calvin Wong Environmental Health Sciences

Southern California Chapter of the Society of Toxicology Poster Award Ciara Martin Molecular Toxicology

Southern California Society of Toxicology Travel Award Yichang Chen Molecular Toxicology

Southwest Region Public Health Training Center Award Rachel Brady Jamie Cassutt Marianne Chen Amelia DeFosset Joanna Ekstrom Karla Gonzalez Gabriela Labrana Katherine Lincicum Samantha Lupinetti Cynthia Mendez Kohlieber Alek Miller Andriana RomeroEspinoza Karen Roque Jasmine Smith Tina Duyen Tran Willetta Waisath Miranda Westfall Stephanie Wong Jennifer Xiong Eduardo Zamora Community Health Sciences Justine Dam Sonia Djordjevic Kriszta Farkas Dan Huynh Environmental Health Sciences Kimberly Foster Edward Lan Caleb Lyu Paige Sheridan Elizabeth Traub Epidemiology Alice Nguyen Health Policy and Management

Systems and Integrative Biology Training Program Max Tolkoff Biostatistics

Toni Yancey Opportunity Award Jaime Lopez Community Health Sciences

Tony Norton Fellowship

UCLA Blum Center Summer Scholars Claire Bristow Rebecca Foelber Epidemiology

UCLA Competitive Edge Solomon Makgoeng Epidemiology

UCLA Epidemiology Department Fellowship Roch Nianogo Aolin Wang Epidemiology

UCLA/Fogarty AIDS International Training and Research Program San Hone Vannda Kab Xing Liu Thuong Nguyen Debottam Pal Jie Wu Epidemiology

UCLA/USC Predoctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships in Molecular Genetic Epidemiology of Cancer Aileen Baecker Daniel Keebler Claire Kim Travis Meyers Fayth Miles Erin Peckham Gina Wallar Epidemiology

UCSD Postdoctoral Fellowship: NIDA Training Program in Substance Use, HIV and Related Infections Heather Pines Epidemiology

Upsilon Phi Delta National Honorary Society Gabriel Adelman Jeffrey Agner Kevin Baldwin Jennifer Combs Suzanne Cominski Susan Kum Michele LaPointe Dimiter Milev Aamer Mumtaz Jeanette Schulz Health Policy and Management

Virginia Li Opportunity Award Marcie Lee Community Health Sciences

Wilshire Foundation Internship Fund Brittany Barba Vanessa Grau Ana Poblet-Kouttjie Community Health Sciences Michelle Keller Health Policy and Management

Kevin Milani Tessa Verhoef Environmental Health Sciences

Women’s Environmental Council (WEC) 2013-2014 Scholarship

UCLA Affiliates Award

Elizabeth McElroy Environmental Health Sciences

Patience Afulani Community Health Sciences Allison Mangiaracino Health Policy and Management

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are

we the future

of

PUBLIC HEALTH Your gift supporting fellowships at FSPH helps students like Sonja Perryman, who is committed to reducing obesity in low-income neighborhoods, Jaime Lopez, who wants to improve the health of immigrant farm-working families like his own, Marcie Lee, who is passionate about reducing barriers to quality care for the Hmong community, and many more — future public health leaders who are dedicating their careers to improving the lives of millions of people around the world.

Support our students and invest in the power of public health at http://giving.ucla.edu/ph

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Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage PAID

UCLA

Box 951772 405 Hilgard Avenue Los Angeles, California 90095-1772 www.ph.ucla.edu Address Service Requested

“I want to help make the world a place in which a child’s health status is not a reflection of his or her socioeconomic status.”

– Ejiro Ntekume, Fielding School MPH student