UCLA Fielding's 2026 "Admitted Students Day" brings together faculty, staff, and students

More than 90 new students attended the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health's 2026 "Admitted Students Day"  events, which brought faculty, staff, and both current and admitted students for a series of events on the Westwood campus designed for new students to meet their potential classmates and the rest of the UCLA community.

In his welcoming remarks at the event, UCLA Fielding's Dean Dr. Ron Brookmeyer, a distinguished professor in the Department of Biostatistics, commented on the academic and educational diversity of the group, making the point that public health draws strength from the varied backgrounds and interests of those who come to the discipline.

"You know, as an undergraduate I was an engineering student, and then there was this calling that I wanted to do something more health related, and so I became a biostatistician, and ultimately it led me to an academic career in a school of public health," Brookmeyer said. "Ask the folks that you're sitting with 'how did you find public health?' and eventually you'll find everyone comes at it from a different way. There's no straight line to get from point A to point B and that's OK, that's OK; we've all approached it differently."

The day-long program April 3 included a variety of sessions and discussions, including:

• UCLA Fielding's focus on student-led research.
• How the school's Office of Public Health Practice (OPHP) translates research and science into professional practice.
• Student support from the school's Office of Inclusive Excellence.
• Peer-led sessions current students, including in the undergraduate, master's, and doctoral programs.
• Meetings with faculty and students from UCLA Fielding's five academic departments, Biostatistics, Community Health Sciences, Environmental Health Sciences, Epidemiology, and Health Policy and Management; and
• UCLA campus tours.

Dr. Angie Denise Otiniano Verissimo, associate professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences, took questions from the students on how UCLA Fielding partners with medical, public health, and similar agencies, foundations, and companies across southern California to give Fielding students opportunities to work hands-on, in their chosen fields, on practice-based research.

"We have these phenomenal community partners," Otiniano Verissimo said. "I will tell them we have these passionate, phenomenal students that are being trained on research, they are being trained on data analysis, program evaluation, grant-writing, and they benefit tremendously from hands-on experience, instead of writing a paper and it stays on a computer.”

Dr. James Macinko, professor in the departments of Community Health Sciences and Health Policy and Management and UCLA Fielding's associate dean of research, did the same on the research and types of opportunities available in the school's 18 research centers.

"The second you start in your classes, you're going to be talking about different kinds of data, data from administrative records, data that can come from the health department, and data that comes from people," Macinko said. "Interviewing people, understanding exactly what their barriers are for getting health care, or understanding a new kind of intervention ... we need to understand why are some people are healthy, why are some people not so healthy, and how do we make a difference in those people's lives."