Healthy and At-Risk Populations

University Of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

The Healthy and At-Risk Populations Program currently has 26 members, 12 of whom are new to the cancer center. The new members include a number of senior and junior recruits to UCLA, as well as previously unaffiliated UCLA faculty members. A new senior level recruit is Lenore Arab, Ph.D., whose focus is on nutrition and cancer. The JCCC provided critical support for Dr. Arab's research. In addition, we were fortunate that the School of Nursing recently recruited Felicia Hodge, Dr.PH, who is also Director, Center for American Indian/Indigenous Research and Education (CAIRE) on the UCLA campus. Dr. Hodge has a long history of tobacco control and cancer screening research in native American populations and has been an excellent addition to HARP. Also in the past funding cycle, Robert Kaplan, Ph.D., was recruited to be the Chair of Health Services in the School of Public Health, and he has joined HARP. Dr. Kaplan is an internationally renowned scholar in the areas of health services and health psychology and conducts research in broad content areas including tobacco control, cancer screening, quality of life, and quality of care. Other internal senior level faculty who have been attracted to join HARP during the past funding cycle include Lillian Gelberg, M.D., Family Medicine and Leeka Kheifets, Ph.D., Epidemiology. Junior faculty recruited to UCLA during the past cycle who have newly joined the cancer center include Michael Ong, M.D., Ph.D., General Internal Medicine-Health Services and Dominic Frosch, Ph.D., General Internal Medicine-Health Services Research. The Program is extremely dynamic, and is viewed as a welcoming and supportive environment for collaborative research. Our members have national and international reputations, and we have in our program three members of the Institute of Medicine. The total number of publications in the last cycle was 425 out of which 18% were inter-programmatic and 18% were intra-programmatic indicating a high level of collaborative research in the program. Fourteen percent of the publications could be characterized as high impact. During the current funding year, peerreviewed funding totaled $11.4 million in total costs, including $5.3 million from the National Cancer Institute. As with other Program Areas, JCCC fosters a number of interactive activities and many of the Shared Resources that support investigators in the HARP Program Area. During the current grant cycle, funds from the JCCC in the form of CCSG Developmental Funds, institutional support and philanthropic gifts to the HARP Program Area total $348,500. These funds supported Seed Grants, the annual Helene Brown award and trainees. Four of the Program Area Members were the recipients of JCCC support.