Up to $200,000 will be awarded to community organizations to implement student projects.
The winning projects in the Health Equity Challenge support housing, mental health, and treating people experiencing homelessness.
As many as 50% of blind high school students drop out of high school and COVID only exacerbated this problem.
Coming from a low-income community of color, I personally witnessed how generations of systemic racism and economic corruption have led to a powerful mistrust in the health care system.
Postpartum depression (PPD) is a silent struggle for many new mothers, but for South Asian women, cultural stigmas and generational pressures often exacerbate this already challenging condition. As a woman of color and a first-generation college graduate, I have walked a path shaped by the nuances of both my cultural heritage and my academic pursuits.
The scent of antiseptic and tapioca pudding wafted through the air. Placing the empty food tray on my borrowed cot, I glanced around my grandparents' shared room. Clunky metal beds, a suitcase full of clothes, and a bulletin board on the wall filled with doctor notes and medication lists.
Radiate Health is my UCLA Health Equity Challenge project that centers around an HIV self-testing kit tailored to the Latinx community that hopes to increase frequent testing, reduce the negative stigma around HIV, and increase HIV education.
Grandma Lul and Grandpa Ghebreab first came to live with my family when I was three years old. They were my mother's parents and traveled the same long path that brought my mother and father to the U.S. from a small country in the Horn of Africa, called Eritrea. I didn’t know it then, but over the years, my grandparents and I would form an unbreakable bond.
Steaming, juicy soup dumplings, spicy tender beef soup with thick knife-cut noodles, and refreshing iced boba milk tea with sugar adjusted so it’s not-too-sweet. These are some of the imagery that often pop into one’s mind when speaking about the San Gabriel Valley.
On a Monday morning in December 2002, the improper dismantling of a mortar shell by workers at a local metal recycler in Watts sent a 40-pound cannon round 1,000 feet into the air. On descent, it landed in the baseball field of David Starr Jordan High School, which stands directly adjacent to the facility. At the time, no students were present on the field (luckily).
