Karla Murillo, Cameron Salehi, Nikolas Wianecki, and Nadeeka Karunaratne were selected as the grand prize winners of the inaugural UCLA Health Equity Challenge. Read the press release.
Meet all 14 finalists and learn more about their projects.
Katie Fruin
Project: A multilingual financial health toolkit in the form of a cookbook that combines recipes with a basic financial health curriculum for immigrant families who are undocumented.
Chenglin Hong
Project: Technology-based interventions to facilitate Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) prevention, predict IPV victimization using social media data, and inform IPV help-seeking strategies that are specifically tailored for gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men.
Nadeeka Karunaratne
Project: Integrate trauma-informed yoga services into domestic and sexual violence agencies in Los Angeles County, providing Asian and Pacific Islander survivors access to healing modalities, and supporting their trauma recovery and overall health and wellness.
Mariam Khan
Project: A pilot program that offers financial services and education, including tailored employment, credit, debt, and budget counseling for low-income communities in South Los Angeles, in a trusted community-based setting.
Cassandra Lautredou
Project: Combines a behavioral approach that uses systemic reinforcement (either money or vouchers) with the administration of oral PrEP— to decrease the risk of HIV acquisition in people experiencing homelessness and at risk of HIV infection.
Patrick Liu
Project: Transform safety net health care clinics into anti-poverty gateways through the development of a web app that provides low-income families with easy-to-understand information and digital applications for anti-poverty programs at the federal, state, and local levels.
Mohammad Khorgamphar
Project: A water quality improvement program to prevent and reduce the rate of related disease among people from lower socioeconomic statuses who are more at risk.
Purnima S. Mudnal-Bharath
Project: A social support public health intervention for overweight/obese children and children with special health care needs in Riverside County, California.
Karla Murillo
Project: A comprehensive mobile health screening protocol for chronic eye diseases designed for use in low-resource settings, titled Integrated Screening Eye Exams – Los Angeles (iSEE-LA).
McKayla Poppens
Project: Expands access to sun protective measures for people experiencing homelessness and reduces skin cancer by providing sunscreen dispensers in community parks and nearby highly-trafficked areas.
Virginia Reyes
Project: A hybrid health education and peer support program to address low rates of exclusive long-term breastfeeding practices among low-income Latina women in Los Angeles County.
Cameron Salehi
Project: A continuing education program to provide Community Health Workers (CHWs) with the knowledge and skills necessary to build capacity for risk mitigation and resilience against the health effects of climate change in indigenous communities.
Nikolas Wianecki
Project: Develop extreme heat survival trainings and toolkits for caregivers of older adults and people with chronic conditions to prepare them to respond to increasingly devastating natural disasters and protect vulnerable communities.
Cecile Yama
Project: Implementation of a novel tax filing app, Let’s Get Set, to increase receipt of direct cash payments via tax credits for low-income families in community and health care settings.