Founding initiatives
Global Cancer Control, Violence Against Women and Children, and the Future of Higher Education are Prosper’s founding initiatives. Each addresses a distinct challenge, while asking shared questions about equity, institutions, financing, implementation, and partnership with affected communities. The research methods and collaborations developed through these initiatives can also support future work on other challenges in human, social, and economic development.
Improving Global Cancer Control
Cancer is a challenge for health systems, financing, law, and technology, not medicine alone. Building on the Lancet Commission on Cancer and Health Systems (report launching early 2027), this initiative, based at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, brings together medicine, public health, nursing, public policy, law, management, engineering, the humanities, and the social sciences, alongside patients, survivors, and community health organizations, to advance the health-system, financing, and policy case for comprehensive cancer care. Thus far, activities include comparative policy analyses, evidence syntheses, and discussions with patients, researchers, health-system leaders, and public agencies. As we expand the initiative’s scope, faculty, students, and partners will contribute to the initiative across multiple dimensions to help control cancer.
Preventing Violence Against Women and Children
Violence affects one in three women and at least one in five children, with lifelong consequences for health, poverty, and well-being. Building on the Lancet Commission on Violence Against Women and Violence Against Children (report expected mid-2027), this UCLA-wide initiative convenes public health, medicine, law, education, social welfare, public policy, economics, neuroscience, and behavioral health to strengthen coordination across health, social, and justice sectors. Prosper will connect the Commission’s global findings to local implementation and give faculty and students opportunities to advance evidence-based prevention and education programs with partners.
Reimagining Higher Education
Prosper, in collaboration with the UCLA School of Education & Information Studies, will house UCLA’s role as secretariat of a new global Elsevier-Lancet Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Convening university leaders from around the world, the Commission will examine the core functions of universities (creating knowledge, educating students, and translating research into benefit for society) and how they should evolve amid shifting public expectations, financial pressure, and rapid advances in artificial intelligence. As a public research university rooted in Los Angeles, UCLA offers both a global vantage point and a local test bed, grounding findings in one of the world’s most diverse cities.
Get Involved
Opportunities to get involved are coming soon. If you’re a faculty member, student, community organization, or partner interested in joining Prosper, we’d like to hear from you at ProsperInstitute@ucla.edu.