UCLA Fielding School of Public Health student Nadeen Heyari receives Academic Excellence Award

A UCLA Fielding School of Public Health student has been recognized for academic excellence at the school, ranked as among the top public health institutions in the United States.

Nadeen Heyari, who graduated this month with her bachelor of science in public health, received the Kim-Farley Family Award for Academic Excellence in Public Health at UCLA Fielding’s 2026 Student Academic Honors and Awards Ceremony.

“I am passionate about advancing health equity through chronic disease research, data analysis, and community-centered solutions, and want to improve health intervention evaluation, trauma-informed care, and population health outcomes,” said Heyari, who considers Orange County, California her hometown and graduated from Tustin High School there in 2022.

The Kim-Farley award goes to undergraduate public health majors - in both BA and BS programs - with the highest cumulative GPAs at the end of the winter quarter in their senior year; Heyari’s cumulative GPA at UCLA is 4.0. She will begin a master of public health (MPH) degree program, focused on epidemiology, in the fall at UCLA Fielding.

The award is 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, an MPH from UC Berkeley.

Along with her academic achievement at UCLA, Heyari has served as an undergraduate research fellow at UCLA Fielding’s Massey Lab, contributing to projects on the dissemination of reproductive health information in West Africa, as well as supporting children’s and adolescents’ health initiatives at Children’s Hospital of Orange County and Vista Village, a non-profit focused on family services and child care for those in need in Los Angeles.

“The intent of these awards is to support our undergraduate students with interest in serving in public health agencies, who may often be first-generation college students, whether they are going on to a medical or doctoral program or not,” said Kim-Farley, a physician 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 Nadeen, with her combination of academic excellence and community service, is one of this year’s honorees.”