UCLA Fielding School celebrates new undergraduate degree program’s 2025 graduates at capstone event

The “hands-on experience” element of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health’s new bachelors’ degrees was in full evidence among the presentations at the program’s capstone event this month at UCLA Fielding. Fifteen student teams presented their projects in areas ranging from improving oral health for school-age children in Los Angeles to providing better support for caregivers in Long Beach.  

UCLA Fielding’s Dean Ron Brookmeyer, distinguished professor in the Department of Biostatistics who teaches in both the graduate and undergraduate programs, welcomed the event’s attendees. 

“Public health provides a lens for looking at the critical problems that we face as a society,” Brookmeyer told more than 50 students and their guests at the June 4 event, which spotlighted the six-months-long research projects in communities across the region. “What you've shown is the difference that you can make, and how you can work with community partners, to take what you learned in your classes and apply it to make a difference in our communities.” 

The new degree program began with an initial cohort of 40 UCLA undergraduate students in 2023 able to pursue a bachelor of arts (BA), or a bachelor of science (BS), degree in public health. Of those, 34 are graduating with the UCLA Fielding class of 2025, and enrollment has almost doubled from the initial group; organizers said the capstone program’s emphasis on practical, real-world projects has been a major driver of interest in the degree programs. 

“The students spoke to us in the beginning, and they all said they wanted to do something that could help the community; they didn't want to solely conduct research or deliver a made-up culminating project,” said Lindsay Rice, UCLA Fielding’s director of undergraduate experiential learning. “There's plenty of work to be done and our students are incredibly bright and capable, so by working with partners from all over Los Angeles County, we can provide that real-world experience and allow for them to engage with professionals and community members, which bridges the gap between academic research and public health in practice.” 

Working in small groups, the students applied what they’ve learned as public health majors to projects defined by the partner organizations, with scopes of work that included revising health education materials, collecting and analyzing data, researching best practices, developing training and data collection tools, designing recruitment strategies, facilitating community engagement, and creating content for social media and external communications. 

The 15 community partners serve people with a wide range of needs, ranging from the Hemophilia Foundation of Southern California to Food Access Los Angeles; partner representatives universally said the students brought a level of energy and skill that was much appreciated by their organization’s professional staff. 

“They were detail-oriented, inquisitive, and ready to get their hands dirty and try to come up with solutions that met the needs of our project,” said Dr. Alejandra Albarran Moses, who leads a new effort of the City of Long Beach’s effort to support the mental health of parents and caregivers of children under five.  

That program began in 2024, almost simultaneously with the availability of the undergraduate capstone program’s students.  

“The timing was really just perfect; having these students come in and be able to ‘semi-serve’ as our interim team, so that we could prepare the work, was just perfect timing,” Albarran Moses said. 

One of those students is Jasleen Hira, a Hayward, California native who began at UCLA as a biology major but switched to the public health degree program when it became available. Hira is graduating with her BA this year before going onto law school. 

“Improving health doesn't have to just be from a clinical standpoint, which is what I thought going into college,” said Hira, whose Long Beach team had to learn how to interview clients, oftentimes with language or other barriers, and report on their needs to the city staff. “But health policy and management, as a discipline, really caught my eye, and is really something that I am passionate about.” 

Separately from the capstone program, UCLA Fielding’s support for undergraduate students includes several awards for undergraduates, including the Jay S. Drotman Award, given in 2025 to Matthew Vu, and a new series of academic achievement for public health majors – in both the BA and BS programs - with the highest cumulative GPAs at the end of the winter quarter. This year’s recipients, Supriya Macha and Grace Chang, both did their capstones with the Beach Cities Health District, which provides preventive health services in Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, and Redondo Beach.

The new awards are funded by an endowment from Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, professor-in-residence with joint appointments in the departments of Epidemiology and Community Health Sciences at the UCLA Fielding School, and his spouse, Han Ju Kim-Farley, also a public health expert. 

“The intent of these awards is to support our undergraduate students with interest in serving in public health agencies, whether they are going on to a medical or doctoral program or not,” said Kim-Farley, who served as director of the Division of Communicable Disease Control and Prevention at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health from 2004-18. “It is really designed to support bringing the brightest of our students into the public health workforce, and Han Ju and I are very pleased that Grace and Supriya, with their combination of academic excellence and community service, are the first honorees.”

To view and download photos from the event, please click here.