The David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA launches a new humanities curriculum to foster critical thinking and insight into the human condition while educating future physicians to care for themselves as well as their patients.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults in California face significant barriers in accessing health care, despite having similar or better rates of health-insurance coverage than heterosexual or cisgender adults, a new UCLA report shows.

These barriers include a lack of timely access to needed care, not having a usual source of care, having trouble finding providers and experiencing unfair treatment, according to researchers from UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research and the Williams Institute in the UCLA School of Law.

Students who participated in an after-school program providing four hours per week of music lessons and mentoring in five high-poverty elementary schools in Long Beach, California, not only learned to play challenging music with one another, but showed significantly improved reading and math scores after two years in the program when compared with students who didn’t participate, according to a study published in the Spring 2022 issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Youth Dev

Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (AANHPIs) are among the fastest growing racial groups in California and nationwide. In response to a wave of attacks on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (AANHPIs), California passed the API Equity Budget in 2021 that included a three-year investment of more than $166 million to better serve communities experiencing hate and barriers to various government services.

Despite the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's full approval of the COVID-19 vaccine, 58.8% of Californians who are not fully vaccinated are still worried about its side effects, according to a new UCLA survey.

After 10 weeks of working with mentors and community partners to turn their health equity ideas into full project proposals, two UCLA students were named the winners of the Health Equity Challenge, a competition presented by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and The MolinaCares Accord.
 

The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research has updated its health data query tool, AskCHIS Neighborhood Edition™ (NE), with new topics and 2020 small area estimates that provide specific health and demographic data on Californians at progressively finer levels of magnification: legislative district, county, city, ZIP code,

COVID-19 spurred lockdowns and mask mandates more than two years ago. However, data released today from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research’s California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) show Californians were still taking precautions, such as wearing masks and avoiding large gatherings, in April 2022. About 2 in 5 (39%) California adults said they always wore a mask when leaving their home in the past week, 20% said usually, 24% said sometimes, and 16% said they never wore a mask.

Based on a promising pilot program that screens for and treats depression in college students, researchers and faculty with UCLA’s Depression Grand Challenge have received a five-year, $12 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to increase the reach of their efforts.

The funding will enable the UCLA Depression Grand Challenge team to refine and expand the care program known as STAND, or Screening and Treatment for Anxiety and Depression.

Dr. Frederick Zimmerman serves on the Healthcare Expenditure Collaborative, a committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Roundtable on Population Health Improvement.