The field of public health addresses a wide range of issues, making it a natural for interdisciplinary collaboration. UCLA faculty members and students reach beyond traditional academic boundaries to promote cooperative exchange across disciplines. The following interdisciplinary centers are sponsored by or associated with the Fielding School of Public Health.
The Biobehavioral Assessment and Research Center (BARC) promotes research on high impact science that the National Institute of Health (NIH) has identified as high-priority areas of public health research. With a team of multidisciplinary investigators, BARC utilizes and develops innovative biobehavioral and technological approaches that integrate behavioral measures/markers into intervention studies, prevention trials, and clinical science. BARC also supports incorporation of clinical and basic biomarkers into behavioral research and prevention science.
The Bixby Center on Population and Reproductive Health was established in 2001 at the Fielding School as the result of a generous gift from the Fred H. Bixby Foundation, and has grown since then with the support from additional Bixby Foundation gifts. The center promotes and supports research, training, and applied public health in the areas of population, reproductive health, and family planning. The principal focus is on reproductive health issues in developing countries, where population growth rates remain high and reproductive health services are poor or inaccessible. The center also works in reproductive health-related issues in the U.S.
The Center for Cancer Prevention and Control Research is a joint program of the Fielding School and the Geffen School of Medicine’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Since its inception in 1976, the center has been recognized in Los Angeles community, nationally, and internationally. It conducts rigorous peer-reviewed research in two major program areas—the Healthy and At-Risk Populations Program and the Patients and Survivors Program.
The Healthy and At-Risk Populations Program focuses on research in primary prevention and screening/early detection among healthy populations and persons at increased risk for developing cancer. Its research portfolio includes cancer epidemiology; gene-environment interaction; tobacco control; nutrition and exercise; and breast, cervix, prostate, and colon cancer screenings; as well as risk counseling and genetic testing of high-risk populations. The Patients and Survivors Program has as its major goal the reduction in avoidable morbidity and mortality among adult and pediatric patients with cancer and long-term survivors of cancer.
The Center for Environmental Genomics was established in May 2003 in partnership with the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. The goal of the center is to bring together experts from a variety of fields—including cancer, environmental health, epidemiology, biostatistics, human genetics, pathology, and pharmacology—to investigate the molecular mechanisms by which environmental agents, such as air pollutants and radiation, interact with genetic predisposing factors to cause disease. A better understanding of these processes paves the way not only for targeted drug therapies, but also for targeted public health efforts to reduce environmental exposures in high-risk populations. Environmental genomics helps prevent diseases rather than waiting to cure them once they have occurred.
The last several years have seen major transformations in global public health, requiring major expansion and reconstruction of the international public health work force. Many emerging health problems require timely and sustained research efforts and require application of the best scientific knowledge and focused training and continuing education for the global public health work force.
The UCLA Center for Global and Immigrant Health was established in 2008. The UCLA Center for Global and Immigrant Health was established in 2008. The center includes faculty from all of the departments in the Fielding School of Public Health as well as the schools of medicine, dentistry, and nursing, and the California Center for Population Research, all of whom have research or teaching interests in global and/or immigrant health. Participating faculty have active research collaborations in more than 50 countries throughout the world, and several work both with immigrant communities in California and in the countries of origin of these communities. The center offers a Certificate in Global Health available to students in any UCLA degree-granting graduate and professional program.
The UCLA Center for Health Advancement supplies enhanced analysis and evidence-based information to help policymakers decide which policies and programs can best improve health and reduce health disparities. The center analyzes a wide range of timely health improvement opportunities, identifying those supported by strong evidence. It presents and disseminates the results of these analyses in plain language to those who make and influence public- and private-sector policies and programs, and offers training and technical assistance to facilitate implementation of recommended approaches.
The center brings together faculty from multiple departments of the Fielding School and other UCLA schools with a wide range of subject matter and methodological expertise, including expertise in nonhealth sectors such as education, transportation, housing, environmental protection, community planning, agriculture, public welfare, and economics. It has strong collaborations with government public health agencies, foundations, academic institutions, and other not-for-profit organizations. Within the health sector, its work is focused on how alternative investments to wasteful expenditures in health care can yield greater returns.
The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research is one of the nation’s leading health policy research centers and the premier source of health policy information for California. It was established in 1994 to apply the expertise of UCLA faculty members and researchers to meet national, state, and local community needs for health-policy-related research and information, and to accomplish three missions: conduct research on national, state, and local health policy issues; offer public service to policymakers and community leaders; and offer educational opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
Sponsored by the Fielding School and the Luskin School of Public Affairs, the center offers a collaborative health policy research environment for the leading professional schools and academic departments of UCLA. One major project is the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), one of the largest health surveys in the nation. The center also sponsors major public service programs supported by extramural grants.
The Center for Healthcare Management brings together academic researchers, students, seasoned executives, practitioners, and other health experts, as well as interdisciplinary academic health care management resources to advance health care management. The center is committed to accomplish its mission to unite, inspire, and enrich interdisciplinary leadership that progresses health care management by pulling together the best minds from UCLA and from the broader community to improve the current state of applied research, knowledge, and practice; jointly exploring critical issues in the management of health care organizations; providing an academic home for leaders in the field to contribute career experience and mentorship; producing research that influences management practices and seeks on-the-ground health care management expertise to inform research questions; and creating a library of health care management cases, generated internally and fielded from outside UCLA, as a repository for internal use and external licensing.
The Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities (CHCFC) was established in 1995 to address some of the most challenging health and social problems facing children and families. The center’s mission is to improve society’s ability to provide children with the best opportunities for health and well-being, and the chance to assume productive roles within families and communities.
Through a unique interdisciplinary partnership—between UCLA departments including Psychology; schools including education, law, medicine, nursing, public affairs, and public health; and providers, community agencies, and affiliated institutions—a critical mass of expertise has been assembled. This allows CHCFC to conduct activities in five major areas: child health and social services; applied research; health and social service provider training; public policy research and analysis; and technical assistance and support to community providers, agencies, and policymakers.
The UCLA Center for Healthy Climate Solutions focuses on protecting people and communities from the effects of climate change. The center equips decision makers with solutions that reduce inequities and benefit their economy, environment, and health. With their partners, the center uses evidence-based best practices that improve health and resilience, now and for generations to come. Under the leadership of Dr. Jonathan Fielding and Professor Michael Jerrett, the C-Solutions team provides public health expertise to help communities put leading research and best practices to work. The center works with communities to implement solutions that provide health, economic, and environmental benefits. The center prioritizes those with highest need to help reduce health disparities and promote climate justice. C-Solutions works with local stakeholders, conduct in-depth interviews with policy leaders, and share their findings with partner communities. Through these methods, the center is fortifying its collective ability to adapt and respond to the dangers of climate change.
The UCLA Center for LGBTQ Advocacy, Research and Health, or C-LARAH (LARAH is derived from the Latin word hilaris, meaning cheerful), is dedicated to improving the health and well-being of sexual and gender minorities, and is committed to sharing expertise in public health, including epidemiological methods, developing and testing biobehavioral interventions, education and research training, program design and analysis, health policy initiatives and implementation science. The center works directly with members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community, and is able to draw upon expansive local and national relationships with state and local public health departments, academic researchers, health-care providers, community-based organizations, consumer groups, advocacy foundations, and funding agencies. Its familiarity and experience working with the LGBTQ community and allied organizations well-equips it to inform policymakers of the most effectual ways to reach members of this historically marginalized population and how to serve them holistically through all social determinants of health and justice.
The California State Legislature mandated that the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH) be formed in 1978, when a group of chemical workers became sterile from exposure to the pesticide DBCP, a known carcinogen and reproductive toxin. With branches in northern and southern California, COEH trains occupational and environmental health professionals and scientists, conducts research, and offers services through consultation, education, and outreach. The centers constitute the first state-supported institutions to develop new occupational and environmental health leadership in the U.S.
The UCLA COEH branch is housed in the Center for Health Sciences and involves the schools of Public Health, Medicine, and Nursing. Specific COEH programs within the Fielding School include environmental chemistry, occupational/environmental epidemiology, occupational/environmental medicine, occupational ergonomics, occupational hygiene, toxicology, gene-environment interactions, psychosocial factors in the work environment, occupational health education, and pollution prevention.
The Center for Public Health and Disasters was established in 1997 to address critical issues faced when a disaster impacts a community. The center promotes interdisciplinary efforts to reduce the health impacts of domestic, international, natural, and human-induced disasters. It facilitates dialog between public health and medicine, engineering, physical and social sciences, and emergency management. This unique philosophy is applied to the education and training of practitioners and researchers, collaborative interdisciplinary research, and service to the community. The multidisciplinary center staff and participating faculty members have backgrounds that include emergency medicine, environmental health sciences, epidemiology, gerontology, health services, social work, sociology, urban planning, and public health.
The center is one of 15 Academic Centers for Public Health Preparedness funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The goal of these national centers is to improve competencies of front-line workers in public health to respond to public health threats.
The Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice, and Health is a multidisciplinary, collaborative research center housed in the Community Health Sciences Department leading the nation in conducting rigorous, community-engaged research to identify, investigate, and explain how racism and other social inequalities may influence the health of diverse local, national, and global populations.
The center is distinguished from other disparities-related research units at UCLA by its primary focus on the health implications of racism for diverse populations. Public health is both an academic discipline and an applied one. Therefore, the center encourages the translation of research findings for use by public health professionals, community organizations, and policy makers in their ongoing health equity efforts. Many center affiliates are working to identify, investigate, and explain the specific mechanisms by which various forms of racism may produce local, national, or global health inequities. Others are advancing critical racial theories or building community partnerships to guide their anti-racism, health-equity work. The center supports a community of scholars engaged in cutting-edge research, scholarship, public health practice, and community engagement to tackle questions such as how racism affects the physical and mental health of diverse populations, what tools are available to improve the rigor with which researchers study racism and its relationship to health inequities, which intervention strategies most effectively address contribution of racism to specific health inequities, and what are effective ways to teach public health students about racism. Affiliates represent disciplines of public health, history, medicine, urban planning, sociology, and other areas.
The purposes of the Region IX Southern California NIOSH Education and Research Center are to educate professionals in the various disciplines of occupational health and safety; offer continuing education for professionals and others in occupational safety and health fields; proliferate occupational health and safety activity through outreach to regional institutions and organizations; foster research on issues important to occupational health and safety; be an occupational health and safety resource to organizations and agencies that need its expertise; facilitate marshaling of community resources to address and solve occupational health and safety problems; respond through educational programs and research to the changing range of occupational safety and health problems; and educate nonacademic stakeholders including business, labor, and vulnerable worker populations.
The characteristics of the center are embodied in a coordinated, interdisciplinary set of professional education, continuing education, research, and outreach activities that have a positive impact on the regional and national occupational health and safety practice.
The center has five programs at UCLA, one at UC Irvine, and two centerwide programs. The UCLA programs are Industrial Hygiene, Occupational and Environmental Health Nursing, Center Administration and Planning, Continuing Education, and Outreach. UC Irvine hosts the Occupational Medicine Program.
The UCLA Center for Prevention Research conducts prevention research that addresses the needs of children, adolescents, young adults, and their families. The center is a partnership of the Fielding School, Geffen School of Medicine Pediatrics Department, and a wide range of community partners. The center is innovative in its approach to community service, partnering with ethnically and economically diverse communities in Los Angeles County to identify opportunities for the center to provide technical support to community groups for program implementation and assessment. In addition, the center has partnerships with the Los Angeles Unified School District, Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, and other local groups.
Academic studies and current events have converged to highlight the magnitude of potentially preventable health disparities among various population groups, and the urgency of addressing these disparities. The UCLA Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Equity identifies, investigates, and addresses these differences in health status and disease burden. A key feature of the center is its heavy focus on community-based intervention research to mitigate observed disparities.
The center aims to advance understanding of health disparities across the lifespan and to foster multidisciplinary research to improve the health of underserved communities. With focus on Los Angeles county, the center facilitates community and academic partnerships in research, trains new investigators in health disparities research, and assists community partners in implementing effective programs and advocating for effective policies to reduce disparities. The center also endeavors to erode the barriers preventing more effective collaboration with local health departments and other key community partners engaged in the practice of public health. It is a collaborative center without walls that includes associates from academia, government, foundations, and private/nonprofit organizations.
The World Policy Analysis Center aims to improve the quantity and quality of comparative data available to policymakers, citizens, civil society, and researchers around the world on policies affecting human health, development, well-being, and equity. To date, the research team has gathered detailed information on public policies in all UN member states—including labor laws, poverty reduction policies, education policies, and constitutional rights—with the goals of increasing access to this data and translating research findings into policies and programs at the global, national, and local levels. The center is committed to enhancing global health and public policy research and policy capacity across universities, governments, and international organizations.
