2025 Special Cycle: Wildfire Research Rapid Funding
Early detection of post-wildfire landslides at the Palisades Fire site
PI: Idil Deniz Akin (UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering)
Wildfire-burned hillslopes are prone to landslides following rain events. There is no early warning system for post-wildfire landslides. Evacuation and road closure decisions are made based on the forecasted rainfall intensity. This approach does not fully relate to initiation mechanisms of post-wildfire landslides and therefore has two issues: not being able to predict and act on landslides and potentially unnecessary closures or evacuation orders. The proposed work aims to gather site-specific soil water retention data to evaluate the short- and long-term post-wildfire landslide risk. Critical slopes at the Palisades fire burn scar will be identified using a wildfire-specific landslide model that was developed by our group and past-landslide activity that will be determined from high-resolution aerial LiDAR data. The identified slopes will be instrumented with water retention sensors. Sensor data will be used for early detection of landslides.
Household Responses to the Los Angeles Wildfire Emergency
PI: Evelyn Blumenberg (UCLA Urban Planning)
Key Collaborators: Tierra Bills (UCLA Public Policy | Civil & Environmental Engineering) Michael Lens (UCLA Urban Planning | Pubic Policy | Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies) Adam Millard-Ball (UCLA Urban Planning | Institute of Transportation Studies) Michael Manville (UCLA Urban Planning) Megan Mullin (UCLA Public Policy | Luskin Center for Innovation) Brian Taylor (UCLA Urban Planning | Public Policy)
This project will rapidly deploy a survey to capture the evacuation experience of households affected by the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, California. The survey would be distributed through community-based organizations, advocacy groups, and respondents’ networks. This approach will specifically target harder-to-reach and lower-resourced households often excluded from data collection efforts because of the time and resources required for outreach. These data will allow us to analyze evacuation decision-making, experience, and outcomes related to both travel behavior and shelter/housing. Continued urbanization has expanded the wildland-urban interface, greatly increasing community exposure to wildfires and elevating the need to understand household responses to these recent disasters. This research will inform future efforts to improve evacuation procedures and mitigate the effects of these wildfires on the broader housing market.
Assessing the Role of the Urban Forest in Fire Impacts and Loss of Structures in the Palisades Fire
PI: Edith de Guzman (Water Equity and Adaptation Policy Cooperative Extension Specialist, UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation)
Key Collaborators: Alessandro Ossola (Director, UC Davis Urban Science Lab) Gregory Pierce (UCLA Urban Planning | Luskin Center for Innovation) Francisco Escobedo (Research Scientist, USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station) Christopher Shogren (Los Angeles County Cooperative Extension Advisor in Environmental Horticulture, UC Division of Agriculture & Natural Resources) Ryan Klein (Assistant Professor of Arboriculture, University of Florida)
The recent winter wildfires affecting greater Los Angeles represent a unique opportunity to learn how wildfires spread across built urban areas and evaluate the role of vegetation in fire impacts and catastrophic loss of structures. This project will conduct a rapid forensic assessment of trees within the Palisades Fire perimeter, in order to: 1) Measure tree damage, loss, and mortality; 2) Assess fire damage to the urban forest in relation to the structure, built environment material, and data on fire dynamics; 3) Find examples of unburned landscaping and vegetation around burnt buildings; and 4) Test the extent to which tree species with varying ecological traits might have ignited and contributed to the spread of the Palisades Fire. Results will be able to inform rebuilding efforts and offer lessons in future events where wildfire enters urban areas, and will complement similar efforts that our team is conducting in the Eaton Fire area.
The Eaton Fire’s Impact on Altadena’s Black Community
PI: Lorrie Frasure ( UCLA Political Science | African American Studies | Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies)
Key Collaborators: Kelli Todd Griffin (President & CEO, California Black Women’s Collective Empowerment Institute) Paul Ong (UCLA Social Welfare | Center for Neighborhood Knowledge) Silvia Gonzalez (UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute)
Altadena, a historically Black, middle-class and culturally vibrant community, has been devastated by the January 2025 Eaton fire. This qualitative research and digital archive project continues the research first published in the rapid report data brief, LA Wildfires: Impacts on Altadena’s Black Community. This report examined the devastating effects of the January 2025 Eaton Fire on Altadena’s historic Black community and the systemic inequities that have exacerbated their vulnerabilities. We will continue this research with a focus on the disproportionate impact of the fire’s on Black households and housing in Altadena; the role of demographic factors such as age, income, and intergenerational wealth; as well as community perceptions of ‘what restoration and rebuilding looks like’ in Altadena. We will leverage a multi-mode qualitative data collection and digital archival methodology, which includes the collection of audio and video personal stories, interviews, focus groups and data collection from social media platforms.
Characterizing wildfire impacts on marine life within Santa Monica Bay
PI: Timu Gallien (UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering)
Key Collaborators: Robert Eagle (UCLA Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences | Institute of the Environment and Sustainability) Tom Ford (CEO, The Bay Foundation) Heather Budrick (Director of Programs, The Bay Foundation)
There is a paucity of data on wildfire marine impacts. This project seeks to characterize and quantify the Palisades urban wildfire impacts on marine life within the Santa Monica Bay. On January 7th, 2025 the Palisades fire started which ultimately burned over 23,000 acres and 6,800 structures. Offshore winds and storm drains discharged toxic ash and polluted fire runoff directly into Santa Monica Bay. The former Santa Monica Breakwater (destroyed in the 1982-83 El Niño) is located 2 miles southeast of the burn area and now functions as a unique nearshore habitat, similar to a rocky reef. Here, environmental DNA (eDNA) biosurveys of both invertebrates and bony fish, along with diver surveys, and hydrodynamic modeling are used to characterize wildfire marine impacts.
Invisible First Responders: A Rapid Response Analysis of Wildfire Impacts on Latino Workers to Inform an Equitable Recovery
PI: Silvia Gonzalez (UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute)
The Los Angeles wildfires have disrupted communities and economies, yet the full extent of their impact remains difficult to grasp. This rapid response research project will quantify and analyze the employment and economic vulnerabilities of Latino workers—who constitute a large share of the workforce in fire response, cleanup, and rebuilding but remain among the most vulnerable due to their precarious position in the labor market. Using spatial and labor market data, we will assess the number and location of Latino workers and jobs in high-risk industries, their geographic mobility, and their exclusion from formal unemployment and disability insurance programs. This project builds on baseline research at the start of the wildfires to ensure that all underresourced workers are fully included in recovery policies and philanthropic efforts.
Empowering Educators: Addressing the Needs of Teachers and Administrators in Wildfire-Affected Schools
PI: Jennie Grammer (UCLA Education & Information Studies)
Key Collaborators: Sarah Bang (Director of P-12 Public School Partnerships UCLA Education & Information Studies) Lindsey Nenadal (Assistant Professor of Child Development, California State University, Chico)
The Palisades and Eaton wildfires created a pressing need for quick decision making on the part of administrators and educators as they work to provide continuity and support for impacted students. Using a mixed-methods approach, this exploratory study focuses on the experiences and needs of teachers, school staff, & administrators from two public schools within Southern California. Working in partnership with these two elementary schools directly affected by this disaster, in this project we aim to 1) identify immediate needs related to school decision-making and student emotional and academic challenges (including a focus on the needs of neurodiverse students), 2) develop tailored classroom-based strategies for educators to support student socio-emotional wellbeing and examine their implementation, and 3) use these data to create resources to share with California educators to support neurodiverse students and schools in urban communities that are impacted by wildfires.
Neighborhood-scale urban planning and design solutions for building wildfire resilient communities
PI: Minjee Kim (UCLA Urban Planning)
Key Collaborators: Sarah Harris (Founder, 1866 in Historic Solana Canyon) Michelle Levy (Senior City Planner, City of Los Angeles City Planning Department - Urban Design Studio)
This project aims to develop neighborhood-scale urban planning and design interventions that would render existing hillside communities more resilient to future wildfire events. Working with community partners, including the City of Los Angeles’ City Planning department, the UCLA research team will identify, apply, and develop innovative fire protection, prevention, and mitigation strategies that could be undertaken at the neighborhood-scale. A small, multi-lingual, historic community located in Elysian Park, Solano Canyon, will be used as a pilot project site. Solano Canyon is an ideal candidate for developing urban planning and design interventions in a way that embodies cultural competency, centers equity at its core, and is affordable. A community-based non-profit organization has agreed to serve as a community partner for this project. The findings of this research will be transferable to other WUI communities that are seeking equitable and affordable solutions to reinforce their neighborhoods against possible wildfire-induced disasters.
Planning to Rebuild in the Los Angeles Region
PI: Michael Lens (UCLA Urban Planning | Pubic Policy | Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies)
Key Collaborators: Michael Manville (UCLA Public Affairs | Urban Planning) Paavo Monkkonen (UCLA Public Affairs | Urban Planning)
Zoning and land use decisions by state and local governments are essential factors shaping how Los Angeles rebuilds from its recent wildfires. We propose to study four scenarios and evaluate their impacts on housing affordability in the region. The scenarios are: 1) Build the housing that existed before the fires in these areas; 2) Build the housing that could be built under the zoning that existed before the fires; 3) Build the housing that is most likely to be rebuilt, based on the current trajectory of rebuilding policy; and 4) Build the housing that would be the most ideal for the region’s housing supply needs, while building in a manner that is ecologically sustainable.
Innovations in Insurance to Enhance Wildfire Resilience: Analyzing the Demand for 3-Year Policies
PI: Zhiyun Li (UCLA Anderson Forecast)
Key Collaborators: William Yu (UCLA Anderson Forecast) Jerry Nickelsburg (UCLA Anderson Forecast) Matthew Kahn (Professor of Economics, University of Southern California)
Wildfires are increasing risk and causing damage to homes across the Western US. Beside the physical destruction, wildfires are also resulting in unaffordable and unavailable home insurance. Giving this risking risk, innovative insurance solutions are critical for protecting Americans and their finances. Property insurance policies are typically issued for one year and most insurers require policyholders to renew annually. However, wildfire risks are expected to persist for decades—far exceeding the one-year timeframe used to price risk. Insurance policies that are longer than a year can more accurately reflect long-term risk and help smooth out the higher costs associated with a changing climate. The goal of this survey project is to conduct a prospective analysis of the stated demand for 3 year insurance contracts among past policy holding homeowners in California to inform the cost and benefit of this new insurance product.
Machine Learning to Identify Drivers of Structure Loss in the Palisades and Eaton Fires
PI: Travis Longcore (UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability)
Key Collaborators: Jon Keeley (UCLA Ecology & Evolutionary Biology) Alexandria Syphard (Adjunct Professor of Geography, San Diego State University) Thomas Gillespie (UCLA Geography)
As rebuilding efforts commence and surviving neighborhoods assess damage, discussions regarding fire safety following the Palisades and Eaton Fires have shifted to policy recommendations on defensible space and landscape management around structures. State and local politicians have promptly advocated for the enforcement of a policy mandating no vegetation within five feet of homes, even though the effectiveness of this strategy remains poorly understood. A rapid investigation of this question is therefore necessary to inform ongoing policy discussions. We propose using spatial machine learning to analyze survival patterns of structures within the perimeters of the two fires to identify features associated with structure loss and survival. We will quantify the amount, location, and configuration of fuel surrounding each analyzed home and extract variables describing tree and shrub distribution around each destroyed or surviving structure, along with their landscape position. This approach will result in a swift assessment to guide both local and statewide policy.
Monitoring Contamination in Soils on Public Lands During Cleanup and Rebuilding in Burn-Affected Areas in Los Angeles
PI: Sanjay Mohanty (UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering)
Key Collaborators: Shaily Mahendra (UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering) Jennifer Jay (UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering) Gregory Pierce (UCLA Urban Planning | Luskin Center for Innovation)
The January 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles County destroyed over 15,000 structures, leaving behind toxic ash and debris. Heavy rain in February washed contaminated materials into public and private areas beyond the burn zones, increasing exposure risks. However, current cleanup efforts lack soil testing within burned areas and do not account for contamination in surrounding public spaces. This project aims to assess contamination in public areas within and beyond the burn perimeters of the Palisades and Eaton Fires. We will collect over 100 soil cores (top 15 cm) using a hand auger from parks, creekside areas, and other public spaces. Samples will be initially analyzed for heavy metals such as lead, chromium, arsenic, and lithium and organic pollutants including PFAS and sVOC. The findings will help determine contamination levels in untested areas and evaluate whether the removal of the top six inches of soil is sufficient to reduce health risks.
Wildfire Evacuation Community-Informed Modeling and Optimization for Los Angeles County
PI: Tarannom Parhizkar (UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering | B. John Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences)
Key Collaborators: Ali Mosleh (UCLA Engineering | B. John Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences) Mohammad Pishahang (UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering | B. John Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences) Wadie Chalgham (UCLA B. John Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences) Mojan Sharafi (UCLA B. John Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences)
Wildfire evacuations are complex, and influenced by social, geographic, and logistical factors that vary across communities. This project, Wildfire Evacuation Community-Informed Modeling and Optimization for Los Angeles County, will enhance and calibrate an existing evacuation model called WiSE by incorporating real-world behavioral insights from recent wildfires. By analyzing response of diverse communities affected by the Palisades, Eaton, and Hurst fires, we will integrate first-hand accounts, social media data, and demographic factors to improve predictions of evacuation behavior and traffic flow. WiSE model and simulation software will incorporate fire dynamics, human decision-making, and traffic simulations to provide emergency planners with data-driven strategies for optimizing evacuation routes and reducing risks. This research will improve emergency response efficiency, enhance public safety, and strengthen community resilience in Los Angeles County. The model’s findings will serve as a national and global template for wildfire-prone regions, ensuring more effective evacuations and saving lives in future wildfire events.
Wildfire Impacts on Air Quality During and After the Fires: Toxic Metals, Oxidative Potential and Windblown Dust
PI: Suzanne Paulson (UCLA Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences)
Key Collaborators: Marcelo Chamecki (UCLA Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences) Pablo Saide (UCLA Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences) Laura Thapa (UCLA Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences) Catherine Banach (UCLA Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences)
The Eaton and Palisades fires heavily impacted Southern California air quality. Unfortunately, information and recommendations related to air pollution during and after the fires ranged from ‘minimal impacts’ to deeply alarming. While the basic characteristics of fire-related air pollution are understood, there are significant gaps. As a result, many pressing questions posed by the public and reporters lacked clear answers, especially related to fire-related smoke and dust toxicity, heavy metal burden, how long the pollutants lingered, and the degree to which dust was/will be resuspended from the burn sites on windy days. Here we propose to address many of our communities’ questions, by combining publicly available measurements of heavy metals, other pollutants and winds with tools to trace the location history of air parcels, a timeline of structure and wildland burning developed from satellite data and toxicity analyses of fire-related air pollution samples collected before, during and after the fires.
An Ecological Framework for Sustaining Southern California’s Chaparral Ecosystems
PI: Chuliang Song (UCLA Ecology & Evolutionary Biology)
Current fire management practices in chaparral ecosystems, while effective in California forests, are inadvertently exacerbating wildfire risks in chaparral. Specifically, large-scale vegetation clearing promotes the invasion of highly flammable grasses, undermining the very goal of fire prevention and threatening its unique biodiversity. Recognizing this critical mismatch, this project seeks to advance chaparral fire management by developing ecosystem-aligned strategies that break the cycle of frequent, ecologically damaging fires and foster the resilience of native chaparral communities. To achieve this advancement, the research will rigorously analyze chaparral fire response and recovery pathways, grounded in a novel resistance-resilience framework. This framework, integrating long-term vegetation monitoring data and cutting-edge climate projections, will provide a comprehensive understanding of chaparral dynamics. This comprehensive understanding will then inform evidence-based, chaparral-specific guidelines and best practices for land managers and homeowners alike.
Feasibility Pilot Study on the Health Impact of Wildfire Exposure Among Firefighters: Biomarkers Analysis
PI: Xia Yang (UCLA Integrative Biology & Physiology)
Key Collaborators: Jian Li (UCLA Environmental Health Sciences)
The recent California wildfires prompted the use of fire retardants like Phos-Chek, which contains toxic metals such as arsenic, lead, and cadmium, linked to health issues like metabolic syndrome, reproductive problems, and cancer. Firefighters are also exposed to toxins from burning lithium batteries, which release substances like cobalt and nickel that can damage the respiratory, cardiovascular, and kidney systems. While the harmful effects of these metals are known, their impact on firefighter health remains unclear due to the recent implementation of Phos-Chek. Additionally, the increasing prevalence of lithium battery-powered vehicles burning during wildfires adds further concern. Given the varying half-lives of these metals, which range from days to months, timely testing is critical for accurate detection. This study aims to assess changes in chemical exposure and biomarkers related to respiratory health, stress, sleep, metabolism, and liver and kidney function in firefighters involved in the 2025 Southern California wildfires.
2024
Identifying interventions to increase the uptake of evidence-based policy
PI: Graeme Blair (Political Science)
Over the past two decades, scientists have made great strides in generating rigorous evidence on policies to promote social and economic well-being based on credible research designs such as randomized experiments. However, except for some notable exceptions, evidence-based interventions have only rarely been adopted by governments or other organizations. This project seeks to understand the barriers that prevent high-quality evidence from being translated into public policy, develop interventions that could address these barriers, and evaluate these interventions using randomized experiments. This stage of this project focuses on understanding barriers to evidence use and identify
feasible intervention concepts.
Sidewalking: Design for Equitable Youth Mobility
PI: Dana Cuff (Architecture and Urban Design)
For youth in the city, independent mobility and access to safe and vibrant sidewalk spaces can foster wellbeing, social cohesion, and urban citizenship. But in many underserved neighborhoods, sidewalks are infrastructural symbols of structural inequity. cityLAB's recent Pathways to Autonomy study identified the mobility needs and visions of young pedestrians through youth-centered, transdisciplinary methods to understand the social and spatial conditions shaping youth mobility in Westlake, Los Angeles. To transform these research findings into practical, impactful interventions, through Sidewalking we will design, fabricate, and install a series of experimental and adaptable infrastructural elements that support youth mobility in Westlake. These prototypes will activate sidewalks as safe, social spaces and demonstrate how design research and building strategies can creatively translate youth-centered insights into youth-serving infrastructure. In continued partnership with the community organization Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA), LADOT, and StreetsLA, we will evaluate the interventions and generate a widely applicable handbook of effective sidewalk infrastructure strategies that support youth mobility in urban contexts.
Language development of bilingual children with hearing loss in Los Angeles
PI: Margaret Cychosz (Linguistics)
Hispanic children in the U.S. are more likely to be diagnosed with hearing loss than non-Hispanic peers. They are also more likely to be acquiring two languages. Hearing aids and cochlear implants are assistive listening devices that help children who are deaf and hard-of-hearing, including bilingual children, improve their spoken language development. But Hispanic families face systematic barriers to healthcare access in L.A., so their children often don’t receive the critical listening devices that they need to learn spoken language. The result is that Hispanic deaf and hard-of-hearing children, many of whom are bilingual, have poorer language skills than non-Hispanic, monolingual peers. This proposal examines how the language that bilingual deaf and hard-of-hearing children hear at home impacts their spoken language development to understand the trajectory of language development in an under-served population. Results will provide informed and educational recommendations to create supportive, bilingual home environments for children and families.
The Roots/Routes of Ecological Crisis, Public Activism and Repair Lab (REPAIR)
PI: Keston Perry (African American Studies)
Since 2019, a growing resurgence of climate justice activism has gripped the world. These actions confronting the climate emergency have regularly centered global North participants and ignore historical actions, knowledge, experiences, and ideas from global south, Afro-descended, and Indigenous communities, and movements. This project aims to create space and develop a community of practice among scholars, activists, artists and performers that engender deeper synergies between social scientific research and public activism centering emerging movements, community-based knowledge, and artistic practice engaged in climate justice research and activism in the Caribbean. The project will culminate in a community gathering bringing together social scientists, community workers, artists, writers, and performers to explore the roots of ecological crisis, emerging and past climate justice movements, interventions, and activism and social science knowledge about climate justice. It thus offers opportunities for community engagement and practice-based learning for academics working to support non-academic audiences and engaging in public-facing community work.
Heat, Climate Change and Platform Work Futures
PI: Raval Noopur (Information Studies)
This exploratory project will inaugurate a new long-term ethnographic inquiry into the impact of climate change on 'gig workers' such as food delivery drivers, app-based cab drivers and app-based care workers in urban India. Even as there is growing scholarship on the exploitative nature of algorithmic and app-based platform work, the experiences and vulnerabilities of platform workers vary widely depending on their gender, race, caste, class and citizenship status. This project will aim to deepen that understanding by documenting how increasingly hot summers as well as extreme youth unemployment are contributing to a more precarious work future for platform workers and how they are coping with it.
Collaborative Synergy and Upcycling to Enable Academic AI Research and Education
PI: Dan Ruan (Radiation Oncology)
Artificial intelligence (AI) has brought significant changes in technology advancement and reshaped resource availability. Current large foundation models are trained on huge GPU farms with unlimited network bandwidth, and a significant carbon footprint. Such extreme concentration of computational power and the heavy dependency on it in building AI systems, leads to exclusively industry monopolized large models, depriving researchers at nonprofit academic institutions from developing, inspecting, or dissecting such models independently, and even less accessible to teachers and students for educational purposes. As the AI models become larger and deeper, this forms a fast-growing critical gap between the desire to work, teach, and learn AI, and the resource to support such endeavor. Working with multiple computational medicine departments and labs, our research aims to identify the strategies to support AI research, and strategies to enable AI education infrastructure under resource constraints.
Comparing Two Methodologies for Generating Historic Protest Data
PI: Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld (Public Policy)
Data on overlooked protests fit into three categories. The first, available online for download, is the rarest. The other categories require dataset creation. The second is data via narrative history, events in prose that need to be put into dataset format with human reading. The third is data already in dataset form in a book, such as tables or maps of events. This category is the most promising for dataset creation because the data exist in print form, so making digital versions of them is straightforward; all that is required is labor. The ORCA Acceleration Grant will allow me to test two methodologies to build data from the third category, spurring a new phase of my research and eventually enabling other researchers once the final database is public.
Investigating Clausal Complementation in West African Languages
PI: Harold Torrence (Linguistics)
This project seeks to broaden and deepen understanding of how clausal complementation systems work cross linguistically by focusing on West African languages. Led by linguist and African Studies Center Director, Professor Harold Torrence, the team will conduct research and training in Ghana and Senegal pairing students at UCLA with counterparts at African universities.
Fostering Civil Discourse and Community Well-Being: Strategies for Building Campus Cohesion and Support at UCLA
PI: Jennifer Wagman (Community Health Sciences)
The proposed study aims to investigate the increasing mistrust and division among students and faculty at UCLA, exacerbated by recent political and social activism, polarized opinions, and violent incidents. Using a qualitative methodology, we will conduct 40 in-depth interviews and 10 focus group discussions with diverse members of the UCLA community, including students, faculty, staff, and administrative leaders. The research will focus on understanding barriers to civil discourse and constructive engagement, promoting respectful dialogue, and identifying strategies to enhance mental health and community well-being. Data analysis will yield evidence-based recommendations for fostering trust and inclusivity. The study's findings will be shared through a dedicated website and with UCLA’s Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) and the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, ensuring broad dissemination and practical application to create a safer, more supportive campus environment.
2023
Male Labor Migration and Rural Women’s Health: Understanding Connections and Optimizing Actions
PI: Victor Agadjanian (Sociology)
Co-PIs: Alina Dorian (Community Health Sciences), Shant Shekherdimian (Surgery)
The project will bring together the sociological, biomedical, and public health perspectives and corresponding expertise of the team members to link men’s international labor migration with left-behind women’s health in rural Armenia. A standardized survey with a representative sample of women in rural communities and semi-structured interviews with health providers serving those communities will be carried out. These data will be jointly analyzed to examine how men’s migration, through its gendered effects on family resources, opportunities, and relationships, may facilitate or obstruct women’s demand for, access to, and utilization of two types of health services: reproductive healthcare and breast/gynecological cancer prevention and detection. The findings will provide guidance for effective policy interventions by governmental institutions and non-governmental agencies. They will also greatly strengthen the team’s ability to obtain extramural funding for larger-scale investigative and applied projects focused on improving health and wellbeing of rural women and other vulnerable populations.
Sidewalk Stories: A Narrative Podcast Series for Providers Working with People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles
PI: Elizabeth Bromley (Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior)
This project will use narrative podcasts to bring to life the stories of those in service to people experiencing homelessness (PEH) in Los Angeles (LA). Each episode will be inspired by true stories told by homeless service providers in LA adapted for a general audience. Narratives will be followed by a discussion that inspires and supports while addressing intersectional concerns including burnout, class and poverty, race and racism, structural and interpersonal violence, and incarceration. Episodes will be professionally produced to include compelling voice acting and sound design and will have an accompanying online library of poetry, visual artwork, and resources. Our DMH + UCLA Public Mental Health Partnership (PMHP) team will integrate this series into an existing podcast feed of evidence-based clinical trainings. This project centers homeless services providers as creative storytellers in ways that promote reflection, emotional expression, and imagination in the work of serving PEH in LA.
Sleep Deprivation in Prison
PI: Sharon Dolovich (Law)
Prisons are notoriously volatile environments. They are also places in which everyone inside—staff and prisoners alike—is chronically sleep deprived. Advances in sleep science strongly suggest that this situation is already taking a severe toll on the physical, psychological and emotional health of all who live and work in carceral settings. And as an institutional matter, persistent sleep disruption exacerbates the danger and instability of the prison. This constitutive aspect of the carceral experience has received little attention from scholars. This study fills this gap. Through semi-structured interviews with formerly incarcerated people and current correctional officers, this study will excavate and analyze the various conditions that together produce systematic sleep interference. It will also investigate the effects on the prison environment when everyone inside operates under a perpetual sleep deficit, consider available policy responses, and explore the normative implications of the phenomenon.
The Black Feminist Healing Arts Labs
PI: Ugo Edu (African American Studies)
This project seeks to create a space for exploring and practicing Black feminist healing arts. In partnership with Black Womxn’s Health Collective and the Collaboratory for Black Feminist Health & Healing, we bring together scholars, creatives, activists, healers, and community members to share healing journeys, experiences, techniques, and practices in Black feminist healing arts. The project will culminate in a community gathering where we will showcase a representative collection of the healing arts curated for public experimentation. This work is part of a larger project focused on building a comprehensive digital learning platform that will guide visitors through various Black feminist healing modalities, syllabi, and resources.
Student Debt
PI: Melissa Ann Finell (Film, Television, Digital Media)
"Student Debt" is a narrative short film about a millennial woman living in Los Angeles. Underemployed and saddled with student debt, she is presented with a unique opportunity to make enough money to get herself back on her feet. The only question is - how far will she go? This film project uses dark humor and irony to explore the student debt crisis, the housing crisis, income and wealth inequality both in Los Angeles and across the US.
Arms Around America
PI: Daniel Froot (World Arts and Cultures/Dance)
Arms Around America (AAA) is a community-based oral history/podcast/theater project by Dan Froot & Company (DF&Co), a Los Angeles-based, socially-engaged theater ensemble. AAA fosters dialogue from across the ideological spectrum on Americans’ relationships with guns. To what extent can theatrical storytelling increase mutual understanding and reduce polarization? Can the arts impact Americans’ attitudes toward guns and gun violence? AAA’s theatrical material derives from book-length oral histories conducted by DF&Co of diverse families from around the country whose lives have been shaped by guns. It culminates in live theater performances across the U.S., community dialogues, and a podcast featuring artists, scholars, and community stakeholders. The Arms Around America Public Relations and Community Ambassadors Initiative extends this work through targeted community partnerships and a focused media campaign, aiming to lower barriers to accessing the live theater events, diversify theater audiences and build lasting relationships within participating communities.
Characterizing the impact of genomic structural variation in the UCLA Precision Health ATLAS EHR-linked Biobank
PI: Roel Ophoff (Medicine)
Genetic factors play an important role in health and disease. This includes disease susceptibilities impacting age of onset, disease severity, progression, and trajectory. Large-scale genetic studies are performed to identify causal genetic factors in hopes of improving disease diagnosis, prevention, and early intervention. One class of genetic variants, i.e., genomic deletions and duplications (also known as copy-number variants (CNVs)), is understudied because of technical challenges. At the same time, CNVs represent a significant proportion of the human genome and have been causally linked to neuropsychiatric disorders, type-II diabetes, and coronary heart disease. Here, we propose to characterize the landscape of CNVs using data from the UCLA ATLAS Community Health Initiative, one of the largest and most ancestrally diverse cohorts with > 60,000 individuals. Facilitated by the rich phenotypic resource, our research aims to reveal population-specific distributions of CNVs and their phenome-wide effects, featuring an exploration that supports future epidemiological, clinical, and pharmaceutical studies.
Street vendors in Mexico and the United States: A binational comparison of organizing capacity in distinct economic and political conditions
PI: Christopher Tilly (Urban Planning)
In close collaboration with my colleague Georgina Rojas-García of Mexico’s Center for Research and Advanced Study in Social Anthropology (Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, CIESAS), I propose to conduct a comparative qualitative study of the political and organizing strategies of street vendor organizations in Mexico and the United States, based on case studies of organizations in two of the largest cities in each country. The current moment offers a unique opportunity to study the relevant grassroots organizations in action, given the stresses imposed on street vendors by the pandemic and the shifting political opportunities presented by changing local governments and legal regimes.
Jovita y Valentín: A Story of Grief and Action (Feature-Length Documentary)
PI: Maria Teresa Zubiaurre (European Languages and Transcultural Studies)
Jovita García Ortiz (State of Hidalgo, Mexico) and Valentín Flores Flores (State of Puebla, Mexico) are just two of the thousands of migrants who have perished trying to cross the Arizona desert into the United States since the implementation in 1994 of “Prevention through Deterrence,” a set of policies that reroutes migration into remote and unforgiving terrain. Jovita y Valentín: A Story of Grief and Action is a feature-length documentary in post-production on the devastating impact of migrant death in rural Mexico. It is the story also of four other migrants who take action to help locate, identify, repatriate, and honor Jovita and Valentín, namely, Oaxacan Eli and Marisela Ortiz, the founders of the search and rescue organization Aguilas del Desierto/Desert Eagles; Guatemalan Mirza Monterroso, the Missing Migrant Program Director of the Colibrí Center for Human Rights; and Colombian border artist Álvaro Enciso.
