Incisive, Loyal, Droll: Remembering Mark Kleiman
Colleagues, students and friends of Mark A.R. Kleiman, professor emeritus of public policy, gathered to remember the noted educator, author and expert on drug and crime policy at a Sept. 23 memorial at the UCLA Faculty Club. Kleiman, who helped build UCLA Luskin’s Public Policy program when he joined the faculty in 1996, died over the summer after a long illness. In his 17 years with the program, Kleiman was intellectually aggressive, incredibly loyal and deeply dedicated to teaching policy analysis to the next generation, said JR DeShazo, chair of Public Policy. Kleiman was remembered as a sometimes intimidating presence known for his sly humor and ability to turn complicated ideas into “beautiful pearls.” His incisive questions cut to the heart of any issue and enlivened discourse in the classroom and at faculty gatherings, his colleagues and students recalled. “He loved learning, he loved knowing, and he loved arguing,” said Barbara Nelson, former dean of the Luskin School and professor emerita of public policy, social welfare, urban planning and political science. Brad Rowe, MPP ’13 and a lecturer in public policy, knew Kleiman as a professor, then a colleague at the drug policy consulting firm Kleiman founded. “I don’t use this term lightly,” Rowe said, “but I had a front-row seat at witnessing genius for a period of my life and I’m very thankful for that.”
A memoriam to Kleiman’s life and career can be found here.
View a Flickr album of the memorial.
Study Co-Authored by Santos Earns Award from Council on Social Work Education
Assistant Professor Carlos Santos of UCLA Luskin Social Welfare will be honored with a 2019 Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Expression Scholarship (SOGIE) award for recent research at the 65th annual meeting of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) this October in Denver, Colorado. Santos will share the award with co-author Rachel A. VanDaalen, a doctoral student in counseling psychology at Arizona State University, for their paper, “The Associations of Sexual and Ethnic-Racial Identity Commitment, Conflicts in Allegiances, and Mental Health Among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Racial and Ethnic Minority Adults,” published by the American Psychological Association in the Journal of Counseling Psychology. “This study offers evidence in support of the assertion that lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) racial and ethnic minority adults who perceive a conflict between their LGB and ethnic-racial identities may experience psychological distress,” assert the authors. They add, “It shows that having a strong sense of commitment to one’s LGB identity may buffer the positive association between this conflict and psychological distress among LGB racial and ethnic minority adults.” The SOGIE award recognizes “excellent scholarship that addresses issues of importance to the LGBTQ community and has important implications for social work practice and education,” said Pam Bowers, chair of the SOGIE Scholarship Award Committee, in announcing the award. This is the eighth year that the SOGIE has been awarded by CSWE, which is the accrediting agency for social work education in the United States.
Holloway Wins Grant to Merge Technology, LGBTQ Health
Ian Holloway, associate professor of social welfare, has received an Avenir Award of more than $2 million from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to advance his research into health interventions for LGBTQ communities. Holloway leads a UCLA team that is developing a social media tool designed to offer highly personalized health information to prevent substance abuse and HIV infection among gay men. Under a previous grant, the researchers built a library of nearly 12,000 data points made up of text phrases and emojis that correlate with offline health behaviors. Holloway’s Avenir Award will be used to create a machine-learning system that will monitor social media interactions with participants’ consent, then send customized health reminders and other alerts via an app. The team’s goal is to develop a wide-reaching and cost-effective tool to promote public health, said Holloway, director of the Hub for Health Intervention, Policy and Practice at UCLA Luskin. The Avenir Awards, named for the French word for “future,” provide grants to early-stage researchers who propose highly innovative studies, particularly in the field of HIV and addiction.
Study Highlights Inequality for Families With Two Fathers
Same-sex male couples are losing out on paid parental leave when compared to both same-sex female and different-sex couples, according to research by the WORLD Policy Analysis Center at UCLA. The study, newly published in the Journal of Social Policy, compared labor, social security and parental leave legislation in 34 countries. Same-sex male couples received leave on par with other couples in only four of the 33 countries with national paid parental leave programs, the researchers found. Only one of the countries — the United States — offered no national paid parental leave to new birth parents. “While we didn’t find any legislation that explicitly prohibits same-sex couples from receiving paid parental leave, the way policies are structured or worded can nevertheless stop them from claiming benefits,” lead researcher Elizabeth Wong said. Jody Heymann, founding director of the WORLD Policy Analysis Center, added, “Families benefit when all parents, regardless of sex, gender identity or sexual orientation, can access paid leave to care for and bond with their children.” Heymann is a distinguished professor of public policy, medicine, and health policy and management at UCLA. The research was highlighted in a Reuters news article.
Grants Support Challenging Convention, Strengthening Communities
Four members of the UCLA Luskin faculty have received research grants from the Institute on Inequality and Democracy. The 2019-20 grants, among 10 awarded to faculty across the UCLA campus, support research, scholarship and teaching that challenge established academic wisdom, contribute to public debate and/or strengthen communities and movements, the institute said. UCLA Luskin recipients are:
- Amada Armenta, assistant professor of urban planning, who will study undocumented Mexican immigrants in Philadelphia and their layered, complex relationship with the legal system in their everyday lives.
- Kian Goh, assistant professor of urban planning, who will use the lessons of Hurricane Sandy to research the key role public housing and infrastructure play in the quest for climate justice.
- Paul Ong, research professor and director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, who will create multimedia public narratives that document the stresses of gentrification, displacement and other community changes.
- Amy Ritterbusch, assistant professor of social welfare, who will develop a restorative justice initiative to take research to the streets, producing knowledge about historically misrepresented communities beyond the confines of academic publication traditions.
In addition to awarding faculty grants of up to $10,000, the Institute on Inequality and Democracy supports research by graduate student working groups. The six groups announced for the 2019-2020 academic year include several urban planning and social welfare students from UCLA Luskin.
Research by Abrams and Barnert Earns Distinction
A study co-authored by Laura Abrams of UCLA Luskin Social Welfare and Elizabeth Barnert of the Geffen School of Medicine has been honored as a “highly commended paper” by the 2019 Emerald Literati Awards, which recognizes top-quality scholarly research. The study, published in the International Journal of Prisoner Health in 2018, found that children placed in juvenile detention centers, jails or prisons before their teenage years are much more likely to experience serious physical and mental health issues as adults. More than 20 percent of people who had been incarcerated as children reported poor general health in adulthood, compared with 13 percent for those incarcerated later in life and 8 percent for those never incarcerated, Abrams and Barnert found. The research points to a need for targeted health care for those incarcerated at an early age and calls into question the wisdom of detaining the youngest minors in juvenile halls, probation camps and other facilities. Abrams is professor and chair of Social Welfare; Barnert is a medical doctor and assistant professor of pediatrics. Their collaboration bridges the fields of child health and juvenile justice.
Torres-Gil to Advise State on Master Plan for Aging
Fernando Torres-Gil, professor of social welfare and public policy, has been named to an advisory committee formed to guide California’s leaders in the creation of a Master Plan for Aging. The plan is intended to serve as a blueprint that can be used by state government, local communities, private organizations and philanthropy to build environments that promote healthy aging. “The Golden State is getting grayer, and we need to be ready for the major population changes headed our way,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in commissioning the plan. Mark Ghaly, the state’s health and human services secretary, appointed Torres-Gil to the new Stakeholder Advisory Committee, which will advise state Cabinet members tasked with drafting the master plan by October 2020. “This is our time to come together to build an age-friendly California,” Ghaly said. “Government cannot do this alone — I challenge all Californians to join us in building a California Dream that is inclusive of our older and disabled neighbors.” Torres-Gil’s career spans the academic, professional and policy arenas, and he is a nationally recognized authority on health care, entitlement reform and the politics of aging. He is director of the Center for Policy Research on Aging at UCLA Luskin and co-author of “The Politics of a Majority-Minority Nation: Aging, Diversity, and Immigration.”
