UCLA Fielding School of Public Health graduate Hasibe Caballero-Gomez receives Outstanding Student Award

A 2026 UCLA Fielding School of Public Health graduate has been recognized for academic excellence, service, and leadership at the school, ranked among the top public health graduate schools in the United States.

Hasibe Caballero-Gomez, who received her doctoral (PhD) degree in public health with the class of 2026, earned the Dean's Outstanding Student Award in Environmental Health Sciences, which was conferred at UCLA Fielding’s 2026 Student Academic Honors and Awards Ceremony. The awards go to students from each of the school’s five academic departments, nominated by the faculty, who have demonstrated exemplary scholastic achievement, community service, and leadership in their respective class.

“My work takes community insights and radical visions seriously by centering community perspectives and expressed needs in the design of rigorous research projects,” said Caballero-Gomez, who considers the Los Angeles community of Panorama City her hometown, and received her undergraduate degree in chemistry in 2021 at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. “As a career, I want to focus on leading community-formed research that equips communities and policymakers with the evidence needed to make informed, locally relevant decisions about infrastructure that will increase climate resilience, health, and general well-being."

Her dissertation - When Homes Overheat: Examining the Role of Housing in Heat-Health Disparities in a Warming Los Angeles – will be published in 2026. After UCLA Fielding’s commencement June 12, Caballero-Gomez will be in a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Southern California's Equity Research Institute.

"Research allows me to document and uplift the reality I and many in Los Angeles already know: our homes, and by extension our families, are not prepared for projected increasing temperatures,” she said. “Further, I'm interested in research projects that engage impacted community members to reimagine these futures and develop holistic, community-centered solutions."

Along with her academic achievement at UCLA, Cabellero-Gomez’s research has focused on the connections between heat and health, especially in communities with limited resources. These have ranged from the Los Angeles neighborhood of Pacoima to largely Native American communities in the northern Great Plains states to former industrial neighborhoods in Philadelphia.

In all cases, she has brought together community participants and academic and philanthropic resources, in many cases securing funding for research projects through competitive grant applications, said Dr. Rachael Jones, chair of the UCLA Fielding School’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences. In addition, she is a mentor and inspiration to other students, Jones said.

“Ms. Caballero-Gómez gave a presentation to my undergraduate class Environment and Health in Winter 2025, and I have never seen such attention and enthusiasm from so many students,” Jones said. “Ms. Caballero-Gómez has demonstrated all of the attributes of an outstanding doctoral student and emerging public health scholar and leader, including entrepreneurship, leadership, and outstanding research.”