Meera Varma has been a mental health advocate since her own struggles with mental illness started at age 14, overcoming many hurdles along the way. She has challenged the conversation around mental health, speaking on campus, at the White House, at school board meetings and as an ambassador for Lady Gaga’s foundation. Currently a UCLA graduate student, Varma shares her journey and impact, from reaching members of her local Indian community to visiting the White House, where President Biden made a surprise appearance.
“Our main goal is to expand access to opportunities that promote physical fitness, health and wellness, increased self-esteem, and greater functional independence,” said Michael Garafola, the program coordinator for UCLA Adaptive Recreation.
“People with disabilities need to feel welcomed, celebrated and cherished – not just accommodated,” said Paul McCarthy, coordinator for the UCLA Martial Arts Program, who has trained a visually impaired individual to practice self-defense by echolocating, or using sound cues, and has worked with a person with cerebral palsy to fall safely, regaining more use of their body. “We should be planning and preparing for individuals with disabilities in all programs.”
Both McCarthy and Garafola are optimistic that new California legislation providing in-state college tuition rates, regardless of residence, to Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls training in California for the 2028 Games in Los Angeles is a step in the right direction.
Bruins and Westwood community members came together on Broxton Avenue to celebrate UCLA athletes at this month's First Thursdays block party, which featured tailgate-style games, a face painting booth and performances.
Mary Osako, vice chancellor for strategic communications, said she considers First Thursdays to be one of UCLA’s love letters to LA and a fundamental part of Westwood’s revival after the COVID-19 pandemic. First Thursdays is a joint effort between UCLA and the Westwood Village Improvement Association to build community bonds between students and the neighborhood. Osako said the First Thursdays event series has been successful during its first year, welcoming more than 35,000 people to Westwood in total and doubling foot traffic for local businesses in Westwood Village.
The annual lecture sponsored by the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and co-sponsored by the Daniel Pearl Foundationand Hillel at UCLA, featured Garry Kasparov, the Russian pro-democracy leader, human rights activist, author and former world chess champion. The discussion focused on the tenuous state of democracy in the world including the ongoing war in Ukraine.
A team of doctors, nurses and social workers will be able to scale up free mobile medical and behavioral care to unhoused people in Los Angeles because of a two-year grant from the state. The funds from the California Department of Health Care Services will cover new equipment and staff, including community health workers who will assess patients’ needs, identify barriers to care and expand access to a variety of services in collaboration with other caregivers, social service agencies, health plans and the state.
The grant will also be used for new records management and communication systems that will allow UCLA Health and other street medicine teams to coordinate care for people experiencing homelessness, providing greater continuity of treatment.
A UCLA study found that overall, Black men had a higher adjusted mortality rate even after accounting for other differences between patients.
Differences in neighborhood, home environment and community resources may make it more challenging for Black patients, on average, to recover at home and to make postoperative clinical visits. “Our finding that Black men experience a higher surgical mortality compared with other subgroups of race and sex is troubling, and is also seen with shorter life expectancy among Black men more generally,” researchers note. In addition, poorer pre-operative care for conditions such as diabetes and hypertension, and more exposure to toxic hazards that are frequently found near their neighborhoods that can increase disease severity, may also contribute to the disparity.
For the first time, a research team has identified and analyzed the steps by which immune cells “see” and respond to cancer cells, providing insights for why some treatments may be effective for certain patients but not others. The UCLA scientists directing the research believe their findings will lead to better, more personalized immunotherapies – even for patients whose immune systems currently do not appear to respond to treatment.
“This is an important step forward in our understanding of what the T-cell responses “see” in the tumor and how they change over time in the tumor and in circulation in the blood,” said Cristina Puig-Saus, PhD, a UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center researcher, adjunct assistant professor of medicine at UCLA, and the first author of a study in Nature.
