UCLA in the News lists selected mentions of UCLA in the world’s news media. Some articles may require registration or a subscription. See more UCLA in the News.
Want racial diversity in medicine? Address structural racism | Forbes
Dr. Jessica Faiz, an emergency medicine physician, National Clinician Scholars Program Fellow at UCLA, and lead-author of the study, noted these barriers have clear implications on physician diversity. … This trend is concerning given equitable representation of physicians from underrepresented communities in medicine has been shown to improve the quality of care for patients from those communities. As such, Dr. Utibe R. Essien, a physician-leader in the pharmacoequity movement, UCLA faculty, and co-author of the study, believes systemic solutions tailored to the magnitude of the crisis are needed. (Essien was also featured on NPR.)
Shortage of diverse teachers is hurting students | Los Angeles Times
Studies show that teachers of color serve as mentors and role models and increase the academic outcomes of students of similar backgrounds. “We don’t need more data to tell us how important it is for students to have a teacher that racially identifies like them in the classroom,” said Kai Mathews, project director of UCLA’s California Educator Diversity Project. “It’s important to their sense of belonging, to their understanding of the material and the world around them.”
Democracy for Black Americans is under attack | Associated Press
Director Taifha Alexander said the Forward Tracking Project, part of the UCLA Law School, began in response to the backlash that followed the protests of the George Floyd killing in 2020 and an executive order that year from then-President Donald Trump restricting diversity training. … Anti-critical race theory is “a living organism in and of itself. It’s always evolving. There are always new targets of attack,” Alexander said.
Arab countries are normalizing relations with Syria | NPR’s ‘Weekend Edition’
“There are potential benefits that could be in the works if Arab states actually get some returns for this normalization. So the hope is that it would bring more humanitarian relief and eventually reconstruction to a country devastated by the civil war where over 90% of the population live under the poverty line,” said UCLA’s Dalia Dassa Kaye. (Kaye was interviewed.)
Thousands of acres are underwater in California | CNN
“The ground is literally sunk in some places by 10 or 15 feet over the past decade,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles. “That has literally changed the topography of the historical lakebed. Some places are lower even than they were the last time there was a big flood event.” (Swain was also quoted by USA Today and Bloomberg News.)
Decreasing violence in California schools could be a model | Salon
Across the board, all measures of violence dropped over the 18 year period. And these reductions were clear in 95 percent of all California schools, not just the ones in wealthy districts. … "Relatively speaking, few studies have been done collecting this data, as it was conceived as a tool to help schools and school districts at the local level," Ron Avi Astor, a professor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and one of the study's co-authors, told Salon in an email.
Ramadan at college dining halls | Los Angeles Times
Other colleges in recent years have also expanded their services to accommodate Muslim students… At UCLA, the Muslim Student Assn., which was founded in 1964, has been organizing iftar prayers and dinners and fundraising to cover the costs since early March.
mRNA vaccine for melanoma reduces relapse after therapy | NBC News
The new findings are significant, said Dr. Antoni Ribas, a professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and director of Tumor Immunology Program at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. It’s the first time a cancer vaccine has been shown to have this level of benefit, close to a 50% decrease in the risk of relapse,” said Ribas. “It tells us these vaccines actually work and can turn on an immune response against the patient’s own cancer.”
Pentagon official floats a theory for UFO’s | Politico
David Jewitt, a professor of astronomy at the University of California Los Angeles, said some of the claims in the paper, which has not been peer-reviewed, are “highly questionable.” He called the fact that Kirkpatrick is a co-author on the paper “odd.” “The Air Force is very good at bombing things, but as far as their research on UFOs, I think I’d trust them about as far as I can throw them,” Jewitt said, noting that in 1948, an Air Force pilot crashed while pursuing a UFO that turned out to be Venus.
Blackpink, once a novelty, returns to Coachella as the headliner | Bloomberg
“No other groups can measure up to them,” said Kim Suk-young, professor of theater and performance studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. The younger generation’s love for their music, style as well as the message of female empowerment is growing, Kim added.
Self-love is making us lonely | Time
Dr. Dan Siegel, clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, attributes such jarring isolation to what he calls our “culture of separation.” In his latest book, Intraconnected, Siegel writes that our society “emphasizes separation rather than connection, independence rather than interdependence, individuality rather than a shared identity.”
Hospitals, transit seek aid from deficit-ridden budget | CalMatters
Hospital managers are traipsing a trail to the Capitol already blazed by transit system executives who say their services are teetering on the edge of a “fiscal cliff” that needs big injections of cash to avoid –specifically $6 billion over five years. They cite data from UCLA’s Institute of Transportation Studies that monthly transit ridership statewide declined from 100 million in February 2019 to about 20 million in June 2020 as the pandemic raged and since has rebounded to scarcely half of the pre-pandemic level.
