Hyundai Hope on Wheels and Los Angeles-area Hyundai dealers have awarded a $75,000 Hyundai Scholar Grant to Dr. Vivian Chang, a clinical instructor in pediatric hematology and oncology and co-director of the Pediatric Cancer Predisposition Clinic at Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA. She won the grant for her research in using DNA sequencing technology to identify cancerous genes.

 

Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA is one of 40 recipients of the 2013 Hyundai Scholar Grant, which supports principal investigators known as Hyundai Scholars. Hyundai Scholars pursue research and implement clinical programs aimed at improving the lives of children battling pediatric cancer.

 

“We are deeply appreciative of Hyundai Hope on Wheels’ support of Dr. Chang’s work in whole-exome sequencing to identify a predisposition to cancer,” said Dr. Theodore B. Moore, chief of pediatric hematology and oncology at Mattel hospital. “This sophisticated technology is faster and less expensive for the patient and will help oncologists to design a personal surveillance program using advanced tools to find the kinds of cancer a child is at risk for developing.”

Professor of history Geoffrey Robinson and assistant professor of archival studies Michelle Caswell have been awarded a $40,000 Faculty Initiative Grant from the University of California Pacific Rim Research Program. The grant will fund research on the challenges of documenting human rights abuses in Cambodia, East Timor and Indonesia. 

 

Their project, “Human Rights Archives in the Pacific Rim: Political, Legal and Ethical Challenges,” will bring together historians, human rights practitioners, legal experts and archivists to explore the complex set of issues involved in the creation, housing, ownership and use of archives on human rights abuses and crimes against humanity.

 

The collaborative work will take place over two years and involve an international symposium at UCLA, to be documented in either an edited volume or special issue of a journal. Ultimately, the project will develop a set of best practices for archives on human rights abuses — which the co-investigators currently envision as a list of open-ended questions — that will be posted on an interactive website.

 

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute has approved a $1.6 million research award to the Children's Discovery and Innovation Institute at Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA to study the use of videoconferencing technology to deliver behavioral health services to pediatric patients in community primary care settings.

Dr. Tumaini R. Coker, assistant professor of pediatrics, will lead the research. The project will focus on the integration of developmental, behavioral and mental health services into pediatric primary care using live videoconferencing technology. This study will examine whether using this telehealth technology can be an effective, efficient, and family-centered way to provide services to children in low-income communities.

 

“One of the key strengths of this project will be the emphasis on the partnership between UCLA researchers,  the community clinics and the families to develop and test this strategy to bring behavioral health services into the primary care setting using live videoconferencing visits,” said Coker.

Five UCLA researchers were awarded grants for projects designed to improve patient care and reduce the risk of clinical harm to UC surgery patients.

Lené Levy-Storms, social welfare professor at UCLA's Luskin Scool of Public Affairs, has received a grant from the Archstone Foundation, an affiliate of the American Public Health Association, to conduct a study: "Creating Caring Connections: An Interdisciplinary Intervention to Reduce Intergenerational and Intercultural Barriers to Communication among Caregivers for Persons with Dementia in Nursing Homes."

 

Levy-Storms will be testing the feasibility and preliminary outcomes of a communication-training intervention for caregivers of persons with dementia in nursing homes. She will be working at the Los Angeles Jewish Home in Reseda.

 

The $50,000 grant will help fund a one-year study that will combine two evidence-based communication training programs and pilot its feasibility. Successful findings will lay a foundation for a larger, randomized control trial of its effectiveness.

Laura Abrams, associate professor of social welfare at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, has been awarded a three-year grant from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation to evaluate their transition of foster youth in Los Angeles and New York City. The grant was awarded in partnership with Westat, Inc. and Hunter College. 

 

There are three key components to Abrams’ upcoming work, as illustrated from the Hilton Foundation program strategy:

• increasing transition-age youth self-sufficiency through improved college and career readiness, stronger caregivers and special services for the most vulnerable youth;

• strengthening collaboration and alignment across the systems that influence foster youth outcomes;

• developing and disseminating knowledge for the field.

 

Abrams is an expert on juvenile justice and author of a recently released the book: “Compassionate Confinement: A Year in the Life of Unit C.” Two areas of the project will be given extra attention: pregnant and parenting foster youth and foster youth who are in the juvenile justice system.

 

The Hilton Foundation’s strategy, launched in March 2012, addresses the obstacles foster youth face as they age out of the system by supporting both programs that meet the needs of particularly vulnerable foster youth, and programs that give all foster youth the skills and support they need to succeed.

UCLA researchers and their partners across Los Angeles County have been awarded an $11 million grant to fund research on community-based interventions to reduce the higher rates of stroke and death from stroke among disadvantaged Hispanics, African Americans and Asian-Americans.

 

Under the leadership of Dr. Barbara Vickrey, vice chair and professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, the multi-partnered Los Angeles Stroke Prevention/Intervention Research Program in Health Disparities, will conduct two randomized, controlled, community-based trials of stroke prevention interventions. Learn more about the research here.

 

Stroke risk can be substantially lowered by increasing physical activity, controlling blood pressure, changing to a healthy diet, quitting smoking, lowering cholesterol, and – for certain people - taking medication like aspirin. However, the underserved populations targeted in this research program have numerous barriers to achieving these health goals.  These barriers range from lack of transportation to visit a doctor, inability to afford medication, lack of knowledge about ways they can change their lifestyle to lower stroke risk, living in a neighborhood without sidewalks or where it is not safe to walk at night and inability to read food labels in English, among many others.

UCLA Professor Magali Delmas received a $446,912 grant from the National Science Foundation for her ongoing research tracking energy use in individual homes and testing what motivates people to reduce their power usage.

The ENGAGE project investigates how real-time energy-usage information, down to the appliance level, influences conservation behavior. By placing advanced energy-metering technology in more than 100 private residences, the project tests how people respond to messages on the health or environmental benefits of energy conservation versus the monetary savings.

The NSF’s Science, Technology and Society program funded the new grant. Delmas is an environmental economist at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. Delmas’ co-principal investigators are Professor Bill Kaiser from UCLA Engineering and Professor Noah Goldstein from UCLA Anderson.

Adriana Galván, UCLA assistant professor of psychology, has been selected a William T. Grant Scholar by the William T. Grant Foundation. The award is given to exceptional researchers early in their careers.

 

Galván’s laboratory studies brain development in children, adolescents and adults using behavioral and neuroimaging techniques.

 

“I am very grateful and excited for this opportunity because it will enable me to study the developing brain in the family context, including the psychological, social and physical components of the home as they affect the sleep patterns of adolescents,” she said.

 

Galván’s research team plans to go into homes to study the sleep patterns of 13- to 17-year-olds from various socio-economic backgrounds.

 

She will be mentored by Andrew Fuligni, a UCLA professor in residence of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior and of psychology, and director of the Semel’s adolescence, ethnicity, and immigration research program; and Ariel Kalil, a University of Chicago professor in the Harris School of Public Policy Studies, who is a developmental psychologist studying child and family functioning in low-income households.

 

“One of our goals is to understand how behavioral changes related to decision-making, risk-taking and emotion influence, and are influenced by, neurobiological development, Galván said.

 

For more about Galván’s research, see this website.