UCLA Fielding School of Public Health student Dillon Trujillo receives Outstanding Student Award

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

Dr. Dillon Trujillo (PhD ‘26) received the Dean's Outstanding Student Award at UCLA Fielding’s 2026 Student Academic Honors and Awards event. The award goes to one graduate student in each of the school’s five academic departments, nominated by the faculty, who has demonstrated exemplary scholastic achievement, community service, and leadership in their class; Trujillo, whose research designs and tests public health interventions for communities most affected by HIV and health disparities, has a cumulative GPA of 3.87 at UCLA.

“The hardest problem in health promotion and disease prevention isn't finding interventions that are effective, it's designing ones that are acceptable and feasible in the real world, for real communities, against the social and structural barriers that shape engagement in prevention services and health outcomes,” said Trujillo, who received undergraduate and master’s degrees in public health from New Mexico State University and the University of California, Berkeley, in 2014 and 2019, respectively. “That's the problem I've spent my entire career trying to solve.”

Before his doctoral training, Trujillo directed HIV prevention surveillance and research at the San Francisco Department of Public Health. He recently defended his dissertation - Cashing in on HIV Prevention - drawing on those experiences. 

“Starting my career on the frontlines of HIV as a community-based researcher and interventionist, I saw firsthand how poverty, stigma, and substance use make HIV prevention hard for people who need it most,” Trujillo said. “My dissertation explores whether financial incentives could help bridge that gap and findings suggest that Black and Latino men at risk for HIV find them acceptable as an HIV prevention strategy, and these are the kinds of findings that can move the needle on addressing pressing HIV and health disparities for communities at highest risk for HIV acquisition.”

Along with his academic achievement at UCLA, Trujillo has served as a teaching consultant at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health and is a co-author of 33 peer-reviewed publications, including three where he was the first author. His research spans HIV prevention and care, COVID-19 testing and vaccination disparities among structurally vulnerable communities, and the mental health impacts of hate crimes. His work has been recognized with fellowships and awards from UC Berkeley, the California HIV/AIDS Research Program, and UCLA, including the Celia G. and Joseph G. Blann Fellowship at UCLA Fielding in 2026.

“Dillon stands out among them as one of the most outstanding doctoral trainees I have encountered, distinguished by his scholarly excellence, leadership, and deep commitment to teaching and mentorship,” said Dr. Michael Prelip, professor in the UCLA Fielding Department of Community Health Sciences. “His ability to integrate rigorous scholarship, meaningful teaching, and a deep commitment to addressing health disparities makes him an ideal candidate for this honor.”