As the population increases and a large portion of the current workforce reaches retirement age, the demand for highly skilled health management professionals in California and nationally is projected to grow substantially.

Gun violence isn't just a criminal justice issue, it’s a public health issue, says Dr. Michael Rodriguez, a professor of community health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School and family medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

WHEN DR. DAVID CARLISLE (MPH ’88, PHD ’92) looks out the window of his office at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science (CDU), where he serves as president and CEO, he is reminded of the urgency of CDU’s work in bringing more diversity into the health care professions.

Growing up an hour north of the U.S.-Mexico border in Tucson, Arizona, in the 1990s afforded Dr.

In the first legislative sessions following the historic voter turnout in the 2020 election, lawmakers in 47 states introduced bills making it harder to vote, according to New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. These and other efforts are widely viewed as disproportionately affecting communities of color.

When Dr. Malia Jones (MPH '08, PhD '12) sent an email to friends and family on March 5, 2020, with her insights about a looming pandemic, she couldn’t have known what would follow.

Latinos constitute 39% of California's population, and since March 2020 they have held many of the essential jobs that kept Californians well fed and functioning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, according to research led by two UCLA Fielding School faculty members, their “reward” has been the highest rate of COVID-19 infections and deaths in the state, with significant disparities between Latinos and non-Hispanic whites across all age groups.

When COVID-19 first began to spread across the U.S., Fielding School MPH student Tram-Elayne Nguyen worried about her parents, first-generation immigrants from Vietnam. “They were getting a lot of confusing information about what they should do and whether or not the pandemic was serious,” Nguyen recalls. “I could see that there was no clear, digestible, unbiased information for members of the Vietnamese community.”

Long overlooked and underfunded, public health moved into the spotlight last year, as COVID-19 demanded expertise and solutions while underscoring the importance of investing in infrastructure to prepare for future outbreaks. But while COVID-19 captured much of the focus, other problems festered.