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.
Federal funding to reduce California’s wildfire risk | Los Angeles Times
“What we’re realizing is that the wildfire season continues to grow longer and longer every year — we query whether it can even be called a season anymore,” said Julia Stein, project director for the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law. “So while the need for suppression funding is still great, it’s important for us to be thinking ahead and taking measures to prevent fires before they start.”
California’s proposal to provide health care for all | ABC News
A single-payer system at the national level was a topic of debate among Democratic presidential candidates in 2020 … “California is a big, diverse place. If you can make it work here, you can make it work anywhere,” Jack Needleman, chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, told ABC News.
The push for single-payer health care in California | Sacramento Bee
While the prospect of new taxes can be unsettling, California residents already spend $367 billion on health care each year, with taxpayers footing 70% of that, according to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Replacing employer-provided insurance may not be as dramatic a shift to our paychecks or tax filings as some suggest.
Drop in college enrollment could alter American society | Washington Post
The growing gap in educational attainment could also worsen existing divisions over politics, socioeconomic status, race and national origin, said Adriana Lleras-Muney, an economist at UCLA. “We’re seeing a lot more people moving into the very unlucky group instead of the lucky group,” said Lleras-Muney. “That will be very bad for them personally. It will start showing up in their health, their likelihood of remaining in marriage — you name it.”
Omicron’s radical evolution | New York Times
James Lloyd-Smith, a disease ecologist at U.C.L.A. who was not involved in the study, said that the research revealed just how hard it is to reconstruct the evolution of a virus, even one that arose recently. “Nature is certainly doing its part to keep us humble,” he said.
Thieves looting L.A. trains like the Wild West | USA Today
“This must stop. This is not the wild wild west,” said Christopher Tang, a professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management who studies supply chains. “Back then, thieves would steal money but now they’re stealing merchandise that actually affects people’s lives.” One of the country's largest railroad companies, Union Pacific, said they'd seen about $5 million in damages and thefts and noted on average more than 90 shipping containers are looted per day.
Starbucks workers agree to union in Buffalo, N.Y. | Associated Press
Kent Wong, the director of the UCLA Labor Center, says that it’s a big deal for even one Starbucks location to vote for a union, calling it “a symbolic victory for the labor movement.” Wong noted that it could not only galvanize workers at other Starbucks locations but also at fast food chains. “People are looking at what is happening in Buffalo,” Wong said.
L.A.’s COVID future may be about staying nimble | Los Angeles Daily News
“I think we’ll see a similar type of pattern with COVID in the future, where we may find that variants arise from time to time and we may need to tweak our vaccines to include those variants each year as this becomes more of an endemic disease, one that has a constant baseline in society similar to influenza,” said Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, who studies the eradication of disease at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
Thousands in state may lack access to safe drinking water | Los Angeles Daily News
Nearly 370,000 Californians use drinking water that might be contaminated with harmful chemicals, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California, Berkeley … “We know that drinking water with levels of these contaminants above regulatory standards can elevate the risks of harm to your health,” said Dr. Lara Cushing, the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health’s Jonathan and Karin Fielding Presidential Chair in Health Equity and an assistant professor of environmental health sciences.
Canada: Is it time for vaccine mandates? | CBC Radio
Young children are particularly good at spreading respiratory illnesses — and that’s likely the case for COVID-19 as well, according to Annette Regan, adjunct assistant professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health in California. She says that justifies the addition of COVID-19 vaccines to existing mandates. “Increasing vaccination rates and stopping transmission in younger children is a good thing for our community, but it comes with the mandates,” said Regan, noting that such policies limit parental autonomy.
Treating ‘long COVID’ | KCBS-TV
Despite the fact that ‘long COVID’ is now recognized by the medical community as its own illness, experts say we still don’t know how to define its symptoms. “Defining them is indeed a problem. Because unless you know exactly what it is, or have a very clear definition, it’s hard to do research and hard to come up with treatments,” said UCLA’s Dr. Otto Yang (approx. 1:10 mark).
Clearing homeless camps amid COVID surge | NBC News
According to a January 2021 report by the University of California, Los Angeles, “throughout the 1980s officials failed to comprehend the breadth and depth of homelessness, or to truly consider what its resolution might require.” The enforcement approach continued into the 1990s and early 2000s, but homelessness remained.
The latest on the pandemic | KPCC-FM’s “AirTalk”
“So, one study really was about hospitalization. And what this study found was that for people who have a booster dose, they are significantly less likely to be hospitalized, specifically as a result of infection from the Omicron variant,” said UCLA’s Kristen Choi (approx. 2:50 mark).
