Kelli Ham, consumer health and technology coordinator at UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, is the recipient of the 2015 Librarian of the Year Award presented by LAUC-LA, the UCLA division of the Librarians of the University of California. This award is given in recognition of excellence in librarianship over the last 12 to 18 months, particularly if it advances the teaching and research mission of UCLA, and meets the intellectual, informational, and cultural needs of the university community.
The award recognizes Ham's outreach and educational work concerning the Affordable Care Act. She has led several webinars on the law and excelled in making information relevant to all. She helped prepare library staff members of the Pacific Southwest Region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine and the UCLA community for the act's implementation. And she facilitated access to critical health information for health professionals and the communities they serve.
Ham was the principal author and editor of the “Finding Health and Wellness @ the Library: A Consumer Health Toolkit for Library Staff, 2nd Edition," and she served as an expert advisor for the Infopeople self-paced online learning modules “Health and Wellness Competencies.” She has also been invited to contribute as a co-author of two chapters of the Medical Library Association monograph, “The Affordable Care Act: A Librarian’s Practical Guide,” due to be published later this year.
