Community Collaboration
UCLA Fielding has forged meaningful and enduring community partnerships throughout Los Angeles, across the country, and around the world.
Few disciplines are as collaborative as public health. Practitioners and researchers collect evidence on what is needed to improve the health of populations, and develop policies and programs to put those findings into practice. This occurs in partnership with communities, which bring their expertise and understanding to tackle public health problems.
The UCLA Fielding School of Public Health has forged strong, enduring, and meaningful partnerships with organizations throughout Los Angeles, across the country, and around the world — among other things, raising the voices of communities and building the capacity of the public health workforce to address the major public health issues of the day while striving to achieve health equity. With the expertise and first-hand experience of community-based organizations, grassroots advocacy groups, hospitals and health clinics, local health jurisdictions, government agencies, and others, UCLA Fielding faculty, students, staff, and alums collaborate to address barriers and create conditions conducive to health and wellness.
UCLA Fielding’s public health practice serves as a cornerstone in upholding our mission by training future leaders, strategists, and changemakers to translate evidence and research into practice, policy, and service for our communities.
FSPH faculty are committed to ensuring their findings are translated into action by engaging with policymakers, public health departments, community-based organizations, and professionals in other sectors to design and implement sustainable changes that address public health concerns and upend the root causes of health inequities. Among the integral partners in that effort is the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LACDPH), where many FSPH graduates hold key positions. Top LACDPH officials are members of the school’s faculty or deliver guest lectures, and many act as internship preceptors for FSPH students. But longstanding partnerships extend far outside of Los Angeles, including in low-income countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the FSPH UCLA-DRC Health Research and Training program prepares U.S. and Congolese epidemiologists to conduct high-impact infectious disease research in low-resource, logistically complex settings.
The school’s ongoing partnerships provide robust opportunities for students. Each year, FSPH students acquire practice experience in more than 100 organizations, many of which employ UCLA Fielding graduates. FSPH students are highly sought by these organizations, having earned a reputation for being talented, passionate self-starters whose education has prepared them to make an impact.
In UCLA Fielding’s community collaborations both at home and abroad, everyone gains — faculty, who work closely with partners, learning important lessons as their research and expertise is applied toward improving lives; students, who obtain invaluable experiences that can serve as launching points for their post-FSPH careers; and the community partners, whose goals and missions are elevated through the contributions of their FSPH collaborators. By combining strengths with its community partners, UCLA Fielding is able to take on the most complex and pressing public health challenges.
