Susanna Hecht

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Dr. Hecht’s research focuses on the intersections of economies, cultures and land use, and the socio-environmental effects of these processes, an approach now widely known as political ecology.

Her focus area is the Latin American tropics, and more specifically Amazonia. Her research has major implications for understanding the dynamics of land use change and what they imply about human relations with nature, economies and tropical development. Her work includes analytics on climate change, mitigation and longer-term rethinking of longer-term strategies under globalization, intense migration and novel climate dynamics.

Her work has forged new understandings in the development of political ecology including that of deforestation and forest recovery, the “social lives of forests” as part of environmental history as well as current practices. These include the analysis and viability of traditional tropical land use practices such as agroforestry and the creation of Amazonian black earths (a legacy of and continuing practice by many indigenous populations as well as Amazon peasants). Her early work on indigenous anthropogenic soils was groundbreaking, as it documented how in fact these soils, the product of biochar–and low temperature fires— were produced. She also studies the impacts of migration on forest and land use. In addition to these more arcane systems, she has carried out extensive research on the livestock sector, analyzed in her book Fate of the Forest, and soy economies in Latin America (the main deforestation drivers) and has just edited a major themed issue on this topic for the Journal of Peasant Studies, the top ranked rural development journal.

Dr. Hecht’s interest in alternatives to deforestation involved engagement in the analytics of non-timber forest products and their development, including extractive reserves, which now cover more than 10 million Ha in the Amazon Basin and reflect the outcome of new institutions under the pressure of social movements of traditional peoples of various kinds. She has also paid attention to the gender implications that inhere in land use change from the most remote peasantries in the upper Amazon, to highly linked in central American women farmers whose family members reside in the US.

Forest resurgence in the tropics is now a widely documented phenomena but her work in this area more than a decade ago was landmark.

Through complex analyses that range from Forest transition theory, global markets, agrocecology and the foucauldian politics of governmentality, the widespread occurrence of forest recovery suggests a huge realm of new policy interventions and practices for this largely orphaned segment of forest dynamics. These questions are explored in two of her edited books. The Social Lives of forests, edited with ethnobotanist Christine Padoch and ethnoarcheologist Kathleen Morrison explored the ideologies, environmental histories, and current practices and processes that produced forests in the present day and in the past. Under current conditions forest recovery and control of clearing will be essential to any climate policy. This book thus shows how a complex range of activities—using global examples from the top scholars in a range of disciplines — have produced both livelihoods and forested landscapes. Another edited volume explored the questions of migration, resources and rural livelihoods with colleagues from the Central American policy and research NGO, PRISMA setting the stage for continuing research on the dynamics of migration. urbanization and land use, and their implications for forests and forest dependent populations.

Finally, her research focuses on historical ecology and environmental economics. Her book, The Scramble for the Amazon, won the American Historical associations Best Book in Environmental history Award in 2015, and her earlier volume, Fate of the Forest also won multiple awards. The key to these books is their use of the “natural archive” as well as the human one. Dr. Hecht’s rigorous historiography and scientific training coupled to rich and fluid prose have made her books academic best sellers. She is at work on the third volume for this trilogy on contemporary Amazonia

Using archival research, remote sensing, palynological data and forest census materials Dr. Hecht has been engaged in the analysis of “Deforestation” before modern Deforestation: that is understanding the nature and social dynamics of forest change over time including carbon loss and uptake in Amazonian ecosystems 100 years ago. These researches feed into an understanding of landuse change under current regional development scenarios and most especially the questions of the global carbon economy.

Dr. Hecht’s work has been funded by NSF, NASA, MacArthur Foundation, ACLS, Guggenheim, Ford Foundation, Wenner Gren Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, National Geographic Society, Shelby Cullom David fellowships and the Institute for Advanced studies and CASBS among many other sources. Her work has also received generous funding from UCLA’s Latin American Institute, The Global Public Affairs Program, the UCLA Academic Senate and the University of California Office of the President.

Dr. Hecht is a member of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, and holds a Professorial appointment at the Graduate Institute for Development Studies in Geneva.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

The Social Lives of Forests
Subtitle: Past, Present, and Future of Woodland Resurgence
Publisher’s webpage
Review in Science

The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha
University of Chicago Press.
Purchase on Amazon.com
Reviewed in The Nation

The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers, and Defenders of the Amazon
Purchase on Amazon.com

Donald Shoup

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Donald Shoup is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA. His research has focused on transportation, public finance, and land economics.

In his 2005 book, The High Cost of Free Parking, Shoup recommended that cities should (1) charge fair market prices for on-street parking, (2) spend the revenue to benefit the metered areas, and (3) remove off-street parking requirements. In his 2018 edited book, Parking and the City, Shoup and 45 other academic and practicing planners examined the results in cities that have adopted these three reforms. The successful outcomes show that parking reforms can improve cities, the economy, and the environment.

Shoup is a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners and an Honorary Professor at the Beijing Transportation Research Center. He has received the American Planning Association’s National Excellence Award for a Planning Pioneer and the American Collegiate Schools of Planning’s Distinguished Educator Award.

Link to Donald Shoup’s web page.

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Barbara J. Nelson

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Barbara J. Nelson is Dean Emerita of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and Professor Emerita of its Public Policy Department. She is the Founder of The Concord Project, which builds bridging social capital that allows people from divided communities to work together on projects of mutual benefit. While Dean she was a member of the UCLA Chancellor’s Executive Committee and Chair of the Council of Professional School Deans. Prior to her appointment as Dean, she was Vice President and Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at Radcliffe College (now at Harvard) where her portfolio included all academic programs and strategic planning

Prof. Nelson’s fields of expertise divide into two arenas: social and organizational processes including strategic decision making, conflict mediation, multi-stakeholder decision making, and leadership; and policy topics including social policy, nonprofits, philanthropy, and disability issues. Her research and policy work includes comparing crisis decision making between the British Fighter Command and the German High Command in the WWII Battle of Britain, which will be available in The Most Dangerous Summer. Similarly, Dr. Nelson researches contemporary strategic decision making by American philanthropic foundations. She is also writing a series of linked essays Falling Off the Edge of World: Disability at Mid-Life.

Dr. Nelson is the author of six books and over 85 articles, book chapters, and cases. Leadership and Diversity: A Case Book (2004) demonstrates how linking leadership and diversity improves policy education and policy making. The Concord Handbook: How to Build Social Capital Across Communities (with Linda Kaboolian and Kathryn A. Carver, 2003) provides the ideas and best practices for starting and sustaining organizations that successfully bring together people from groups with historic conflicts. Nelson and co-author Najma Chowdhury won the 1995 Victoria Schuck Award for Women and Politics Worldwide, bestowed by the American Political Science Association for the best book in the field of women and politics. In 1989, Nelson and historian Sara Evans won the Policy Studies Organization’s prize for the best book in the field of policy analysis for Wage Justice: Comparable Worth and the Paradox of Technocratic Reform. Nelson is the author of Making an Issue of Child Abuse: Political Agenda Setting for Social Problems (1984) and American Women and Politics (1984).

Barbara Nelson has worked or done research in over 25 countries, and has made major contributions to policy making and civic life in the United States and abroad. She is a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the UCLA Williams Institute, a legal and policy research center promoting LGBT rights and opportunities. She contributes to the Huffington Post on social equality and cultural issues.

Dr. Nelson’s civic contributions included Co-Chairing of the U.S. National Commission to Reduce Infant Mortality and serving on the board of the Greater Los Angeles United Way. She is a former board member Radcliffe College and its Executive and Investment Committees, the American Political Science Association and its Investment Committee, the National Council for Research on Women, the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, and UCLA Hillel. She was a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy.

Prof. Nelson was a Kellogg National Leadership Fellow and has held visiting fellowships at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Villa Serbelloni , the Russell Sage Foundation, the Harvard Kennedy School, and the USC Price School of Public Policy.

Before her appointment at Radcliffe, Barbara Nelson served on the faculties of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, where she was the founder and director of the Center on Women and Public Policy. She earned her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in political science at Ohio State University, where she was elected to Pi Sigma Alpha, the political science honorary society.

Aaron Panofsky

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Aaron Panofsky is a Professor in Public Policy and the Institute for Society and Genetics. Prior to joining UCLA in January of 2008, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Scholar at UC Berkeley from 2006 through 2007. Panofsky received his Ph.D. in sociology from New York University in 2006.

Panofsky’s main research interest is in the sociology of science and knowledge with a special focus on genetics. He recently published his first book, Misbehaving Science: Controversy and the Development of Behavior Genetics (Chicago, 2014), is an analysis of the causes and consequences of controversy in the field of behavioral genetics. A second major project is investigating how patient advocate groups are seeking to affect the research process in the medical genetics of rare disorders. Of particular interest are the means by which patient advocates and scientists can form successful, mutually beneficial collaborative partnerships. These and other projects fit with his abiding science policy interests in the governance of science and technology and the relationship between expertise and democracy.

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Mark A. Peterson

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A specialist on American national institutions, much of Professor Peterson’s scholarship focuses on the Presidency, Congress, interest groups, and public opinion, evaluating interactions among them, and their implications for policy making, both within the general domain of domestic policy and with special attention to national health care policy, Medicare reform, and HIV/AIDS politics and policy.  He also studies the role of evidence in policy making, including the contextual factors that promote or inhibit its influence.

He has written extensively on how Congress responds to presidential legislative initiatives, exploring how different political, economic, and institutional settings affect coalition building, promote inter-institutional conflict or cooperation, influence the president’s legislative performance, and establish the baseline for assessing the performance of individual leaders (including Legislating Together: The White House and Capital Hill from Eisenhower to Reagan, Harvard University Press). He has also investigated the ways in which presidents use relationships with organized interests to promote their administration’s political or programmatic agendas, based on the presidential objectives and strategic calculations.

As a participant in the Annenberg Institutions of American Democracy Project, with Public Policy Department colleague Joel Aberbach he co-chaired the Commission on the Executive Branch and co-edited the volume it produced on the politics and performance of the presidency and bureaucracy (Institutions of American Democracy: The Executive Branch, Oxford University Press), which won the Richard E. Neustadt Award from the Presidential Research section of the American Political Science Association.  He also contributed to its study of public and elite opinion on the performance of American institutions (Institutions of American Democracy: A Republic Divided, Oxford University Press).

In addition, specific to the domain of health and health care policy, he edited Healthy Markets?  The New Competition in Medical Care, Duke University Press; and co-edited both Uncertain Times:  Kenneth Arrow and the Changing Economics of Health Care, Duke University Press) and the four-volume edited series Health Politics and Policy (Sage), as well as edited the special health policy journal issues, The Managed Care Backlash and Who Shall Lead?

Much of his most recent scholarship has linked these themes and extensive original research to produce a book manuscript entitled “American Sisyphus: Health Care and the Challenge of Transformative Policymaking.” Encompassing the last 100 years, it examines how recognized problems in the health care system, the influence of public opinion, transformation of the interest group community, institutional dynamics in Congress, changes in the context and demands of political leadership, various dimensions of social learning by policy makers, and strategic and tactical choices by presidents both thwarted health care reform in the past and ultimately made possible the enactment of President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, but in a context that also primed the challenge of the law before the U.S. Supreme Court and prompted enduring partisan attacks on its implementation and continuation.

Professor Peterson was a founding team member of the UCLA-based multidisciplinary Blue Sky Health Initiative to transform the U.S. health and health care system, which helped advise Congress on the inclusion of disease prevention and health promotion strategies in the Affordable Care Act.  Previously, as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, he served as a Legislative Assistant for Health Policy in the Office of U.S. Senator Tom Daschle.  During 2000-2003 he was on the Study Panel on Medicare and Markets organized by the National Academy of Social Insurance.

From 1993 to 2002, Professor Peterson was the editor of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, a leading bimonthly scholarly journal in the field. He later chaired the journal’s Executive Committee, on which he remains a member, and also served on the Board of Editors of PS: Political Science & Politics and the Board of Editors of the Journal of Politics.  He has often been interviewed for television, radio, and print media stories, including for CBS News, National Public Radio and state public radio networks, CNN Money.Com, local television in Boston and Los Angeles, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, San Diego Union Tribune, Arizona Republic, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Atlanta Constitution, U.S. News & World Report, CQ Weekly, The Hill, American Medical News, Internal Medicine News, The Lancet Oncology, and newspapers and broadcast news in Latin America, Europe, and Asia.

Professor Peterson has been an elected member of the Council of the American Political Science Association (2008-2010) and a member of its Administrative Committee, a founding member of the Association’s Organized Section on Health Politics and Policy, and was elected President of its Organized Section on Public Policy.  He has served on various committees for the American Political Science Association, Midwest Political Science Association, the Western Political Science Association, and AcademyHealth.  He chaired the National Advisory Committees for both the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Scholars in Health Policy Research program and its Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization (HCFO) program, and was a member of the National Advisory Committees for the Foundation’s  Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research Program and Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico.  He is an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance.  Other honors include the Pi Sigma Alpha Award from the Midwest Political Science Association, the E. E. Schattschneider Award from the American Political Science Association, the Richard E. Neustadt Award from the President and Executive Politics Section of the APSA, and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research.

At UCLA, he is Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Law, and has twice been the Chair of the Department of Public Policy.  He is a Faculty Associate of the Center for Health Policy Research, the Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities, and the Institute for Society & Genetics; member of the Policy Impact Core for the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services; and is on the Internal Advisory Board for the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at UCLA.  He previously served on the faculty boards of the Center for Policy Research on Aging, the Institute for Social Research, and the Center for American Politics and Public Policy.  He is also currently a member of the University of California’s Academic Senate Health Care Task Force and the Academic Advisory Committee for the University of California Washington Center (UC in DC), and was on the University of California Office of the President’s Health Benefits Working Group.

Prior to coming to UCLA, he was Professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, and Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, and Henry La Barre Jayne Associate Professor of Government at Harvard University.

 

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

American Sisyphus: Health Care and the Challenge of Transformative Policymaking.
Mark A. Peterson.  Book manuscript in progress.

Reversing Course on Obamacare:  Why Not Another Medicare Catastrophic? 
Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 43(4) (August 2018): 605-650.

In the Shadow of Politics: The Pathways of Research Evidence to Health Policy Making. 
Special Issue on Policy Analysis and the Politics of Health Policy.   Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 43(3) (June 2018): 341-376.

The Third Rail of Politics The Rise and Fall of Medicare’s Untouchability
Mark A. Peterson.  In Alan Cohen, David Colby, Keith Wailoo, and Julian Zelizer, Medicare and Medicaid at Fifty.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Interest Groups and the Executive Branch
Mark A. Peterson.  In Burdett A. Loomis, ed., Guide to Interest Groups and Lobbying in the United States.  Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2011.

Who Wants Presidential Supremacy? Findings from the Institutions of American Democracy Project
Joel D. Aberbach, Mark A. Peterson, and Paul J. Quirk.  Presidential Studies Quarterly 37 (September 2007): 515-53.

It Was a Different Time: Obama and the Unique Opportunity for Health Care Reform
Mark A. Peterson.  Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 36(3) (June 2011): 429-436.

The Ideological and Partisan Polarization of Health Care Reform and Tax Policy
Mark A. Peterson.  Tax Law Review 65(4), 2012: 627-667.

Institutions of American Democracy: A Republic Divided
Annenberg Democracy Project.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Health Politics and Policy, Four-Volume Set
Sue Tolleson-Rinehart and Mark A. Peterson, Editors.
Volume 1.  Defining Health Systems: Path Dependence and Policy Emergence
Volume 2. Tensions in Health Policy: Ethics, Interests, and the Public
Volume 3. Health Systems in Comparative Perspective
Volume 4. The Contemporary Politics of Health System Reform
London: Sage Publications, 2010.

Legislating Together: The White House and Capitol Hill from Eisenhower to Reagan
Mark A. Peterson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990.

 

Lené Levy-Storms

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Professor Lené Levy-Storms studies how social relationships affect health and health behaviors among older adults in both community and institutional settings. She employs both quantitative and qualitative methodology and uses both primary and secondary data sets for intervention and observational inquiries. Previously, Dr. Levy-Storms has studied social support networks among minority older adults using social network analysis. Her core research concerns communication issues between health care providers and older adults, specifically paid and unpaid caregivers. She is particularly interested in how social support occurs through interpersonal communication during care. In 2003, Dr. Levy-Storms received career development award from the National Institute on Aging titled, “Therapeutic Communication during Nursing Home Care,” which laid the foundation for her ongoing research agenda. In 2010, Dr. Levy-Storms became a Health and Aging Policy Fellow and began to examine policy issues related to paid caregivers in long-term care settings, and she recently published a policy brief.

With her NIA Career Development Award and subsequent funding from the Hartford Foundation, the Archstone Foundation, the American Medical Directors’ Association, and the National Alzheimer’s Association, Dr. Levy-Storms collected video- and audio-recordings of paid and unpaid caregivers interacting with older adults in various long-term care settings, which in collaboration with Susan Kohler created “Get Connected,” a communication training program for providing care to older adults living with dementia. Because of “Get Connected,” she received funding from the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute in 2021 to train long-term care facilities how to train their staffs with it as well as a UCLA Innovators Fellowship in 2022 to explore bringing it to market. The goal of using the communication strategies in “Get Connected” is to obtain an emotional connection, which can be difficult as the older adults progress to later stages of dementia. She is currently writing a proposal to use emotion recognition software to measure emotional connections during caregiving after training with “Get Connected.”

Dr. Levy-Storms has B.S. degree in biopsychology from UC Davis, a MPH in biostatistics and PhD in public health. From 1998-2000, she was an assistant professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Gerontology and a fellow of the Sealy Center on Aging at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, TX. In 2000, she joined the UCLA Department of Medicine, Division of Geriatrics as an assistant professor. At that time, she also became an associate director of the UCLA/Borun Center for Gerontological Research, an appointment which she continues to hold. The Borun Center is based at the Jewish Home for the Aging in Reseda, CA and focuses on applied research to improve the quality of life of older adults in long-term care settings. She now holds a joint appointment with Medicine/Geriatrics and Social Welfare. She also co-directs the UCLA Gerontology Interdisciplinary Minor since 2012.

 

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

Use of mammography screening among older Samoan women in Los Angeles county. Levy-Storms, Lené, Steven P. Wallace. (2003). Social Science and Medicine, 57(6): 987-1000

 

Predictors of Different Levels of Non-adherence to Mammography Screening.
Levy-Storms L, Bastani R, Reuben DB. (2004). “Predictors of Different Levels of Non-adherence to Mammography Screening: Implications for Interventions.” Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 52: 768-773

 

A Comparison of Methods to Assess Nursing Home Residents’ Unmet Needs.
Levy-Storms, Lené, John Schnelle, Sandra F. Simmons. (2002). The Gerontologist, 42, 454-461

 

Patterns of Family Visiting with Institutionalized Elderly. Yamamoto-Mitani, Noriko, Carol Aneshensel, Lené Levy-Storms (2002). Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 57B, (4), S234-S246

 

The Transition from Home to Nursing Home: Mortality among People with Dementia. Aneshensel, Carol, Leonard Pearlin, Lené Levy-Storms, Roberleigh Schuler. (2000). Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 55B, (3), S152-S162

 

Family Caregiver Involvement and Satisfaction with Institutional Care during the First Year after Admission Levy-Storms L, Miller D. (2005). Journal of Applied Gerontology, 24(2), 160-174.

 

Simmons, S.F., Levy-Storms L .  (2006). “The Effect of Staff Care Practices on Nursing Home Residents’ Preferences: Implications for Individualizing Care.” Journal of Nutrition, Health, and Aging, 10(3), 216-221.

 

Levy-Storms, L., Lubben, J.E. (2006). “Network Composition and Health Behaviors among Older Samoan Women,” Journal of Aging and Health, 18(6), 814-836.

 

Levy-Storms, L., Schnelle, J.F., Simmons, S.F. (2007). “What Do Families Notice Following an Incontinence and Mobility Care Intervention in Nursing Homes? The Gerontologist, 47(1):14-20.

 

Carpiac-Claver, M., Levy-Storms, L. (2007). “In a Manner of Speaking: A Qualitative Analysis of Verbal Communication between Nursing Aides and Nursing Home Residents.” Health Communication, 22(1):59-67.

 

Levy-Storms, L. (2008). “Therapeutic Communication Training in Long-term Care Institutions: Recommendations for Future Research.” Patient Education and Counseling, 73: 8-21.

 

Levy-Storms, L., Claver, M., Matthias, R., Gutierrez, V., Curry, L. (2011). “Individualized Care in Practice: Communication Strategies between Nursing Aides and Residents in Nursing Homes.” Journal of Applied Communication Research, 39: 271-289.

 

Levy-Storms, L., Harris, L. M., & Chen, X. (2016). “A Video-Based Intervention on and Evaluation of Nursing Aides’ Therapeutic Communication and Residents’ Agitation During Mealtime in a Dementia Care Unit.” Journal of Nutrition in Gerontology and Geriatrics, 35(4), 267-281.

 

Levy-Storms, L., Cherry, D.L., Lee, L., Wolf, S.M. (2017) “Reducing Safety Risk among Diverse Caregivers with the Alzheimer’s Home Safety Program,” Aging and Mental Health, 21(9):902-909.

 

Levy-Storms, L., & Chen, L. (2020). Communicating Emotional Support: Family Caregivers’ Visits with Residents Living with Dementia in Nursing Homes. Journal of Women & Aging, 32(4), 389-401.

 

Levy-Storms L. and Mueller-Williams A. (2022). Certified Nursing Aides’ Training Hours and COVID Case and Mortality Rates Across States in the U.S.: Implications for Infection Prevention and Control and Relationships with Nursing Home Residents. Front. Public Health,10:798779. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2022.798779

Fernando Torres-Gil

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Fernando M. Torres-Gil’s multifaceted career spans the academic, professional, and policy arenas.  He is a Professor of Social Welfare and Public Policy at UCLA, an Adjunct Professor of Gerontology at USC, and Director of the UCLA Center for Policy Research on Aging.  He has served as Associate Dean and Acting Dean at the UCLA School of Public Affairs, and most recently Chair of the Social Welfare Department.  He has written six books and over l00 publications, including The New Aging: Politics and Change in America (1992) and Lessons from Three Nations, Volumes I and II (2007).  His academic contributions have earned him membership in the prestigious Academies of Public Administration, Gerontology and Social Insurance.  His research spans important topics of health and long-term care, disability, entitlement reform, and the politics of aging.

Professor Torres-Gil is more than an academic.  He has an impressive portfolio of public service and national and international recognition as a leading spokesperson on demographics, aging, and public policy.  He earned his first presidential appointment in 1978 when President Jimmy Carter appointed him to the Federal Council on Aging.  He was selected as a White House Fellow and served under Joseph Califano, then Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), and continued as a Special Assistant to the subsequent Secretary of HEW, Patricia Harris.  He was appointed (with Senate Confirmation) by President Bill Clinton as the first-ever U.S. Assistant Secretary on Aging in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). As the Clinton Administration’s chief advocate on aging, Torres-Gil played a key role in promoting the importance of the issues of aging, long-term care and disability, community services for the elderly, and baby boomer preparation for retirement.  He served under HHS Secretary Donna Shalala, managing the Administration on Aging and organizing the 1995 White House Conference on Aging, in addition to serving as a member of the President’s Welfare Reform Working Group.

In 2010 he received his third presidential appointment (with Senate Confirmation) when President Barack Obama appointed him as Vice Chair of the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency that reports to the Congress and White House on federal matters related to disability policy.  During his public service in Washington, D.C., he also served as Staff Director of the U.S. House Select Committee on Aging under his mentor, Congressman Edward R. Roybal.

At the local level, Torres-Gil has served as the Vice President of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission and a member of the Harbor and Taxi Commissions for the city of Los Angeles.  He currently serves Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as an appointed member of the Board of Airport Commissioners.  At the state level, he was appointed by former Governor Gray Davis to the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Task Force on Veterans’ Homes and by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as a delegate to the 2005 White House Conference on Aging.

He continues to provide important leadership in philanthropy and non-profit organizations as a board member of the AARP Foundation, and he is a former board member of The California Endowment, National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California and the Los Angeles Chinatown Service Center.

Dr. Torres-Gil was born and raised in Salinas, California, the son of migrant farm workers.  He earned his A.A. in Political Science at Hartnell Community College (1968), a B.A. with honors in Political Science from San Jose State University (1970), and an M.S.W. (1972) and Ph.D. (1976) in Social Policy, Planning and Research from the Heller Graduate School in Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

California, Where Brown and Gray America Collide
TIME magazine, June 24, 2015

Policy, Politics and Aging: Crossroads in the 1990s
Torres-Gil, F. (1998) in J.S. Steckenrider and T.M. Parrott (Eds.), New Directions in Old-Age Politics, Albany: State University of New York Press, 75-87

The New Aging: Politics and Change in America
Torres-Gil, F. The New Aging: Politics and Change in America. Westport, CT: Auburn House, 1992

The Emerging Nexus of Aging and Diversity: Implications for Public Policy and Entitlement Reform
Torres-Gil, F. and Bickson-Moga, K., Elder’s Advisor: The Journal of Elder Law and Post-Retirement Planning, Vol. 4, No. 1, Summer 2002

Social Policy and Aging
Torres-Gil, F. and Villa, V., in J. Midgley, M. Tracy and M. Livermore (Eds.), The Handbook of Social Policy, 2000, Sage Publications

The Art of Aging Well: Lessons From Three Nations
Carmel, S., C. Morse, and F. Torres-Gil (Eds.). Volume I. Amityville, New York: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc., In Press

The Art of Caring for Older Adults
Carmel, S., C. Morse, and F. Torres-Gil (Eds.). Volume II. Amityville, New York: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc., In Press

Eric Avila

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Eric Avila’s research interests include (1) History: 20th century, United States, urban, cultural, History of Los Angeles and the U.S. West, historiography; (2) Ethnic Studies: Chicano Studies, race and racialization, spatial segregation, identity formation, Ethnic Communities – Latino American; and (3) Architecture and urban planning: built environment studies, Los Angeles/Southern California.

His research has won various awards and prizes, including the recent inclusion of his article, “Popular Culture in the Age of the White Flight: Film Noir Disneyland, and the Cold War (Sub)Urban Imaginary” published in the Journal of Urban History, within a new publication by the Organization of American Historians featuring the ten best articles in American history written between the summers of 2005 and 2005. He has begun research for a book entitled, The Folklore of the Freeway: A Cultural History of Highway Construction.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

The Chicano Studies Reader: An Anthology of Aztlán
Noriega, Chon, Avila, Eric, Sandoval, Chela, Pérez Torres, and Dávalos, Mary Karen, 2001, The Chicano Studies Reader: An Anthology of Aztlán, 1970-2000 (Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center).

Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles
Avila, Eric, 2004, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles (University of California Press).

Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Film Noir, Disneyland and the Cold War (Sub)Urban Imaginary
Avila, Eric, 2004, “Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Film Noir, Disneyland and the Cold War (Sub)Urban Imaginary,” Journal of Urban History (Sage Publications).

Evelyn Blumenberg

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Evelyn Blumenberg is the Director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and an Urban Planning professor within the Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Her research examines the effects of urban structure — the spatial location of residents, employment, and services — on economic outcomes for low-wage workers, and on the role of planning and policy in shaping the spatial structure of cities.

Professor Blumenberg’s recent projects include analyses of trends in transit ridership, gender and travel behavior, low-wage workers and the changing commute, and the relationship between automobile ownership and employment outcomes among the poor.

Professor Blumenberg was honored in 2014 as a White House Champion of Change for her research on the links between transportation access, employment, and poverty.

Professor Blumenberg holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in urban planning from the University of California, Los Angeles.

She teaches courses on planning history and theory, research design, poverty and inequality, transportation and poverty, and urban policy.

RECENT WORK

Journal Articles

1) Giamarino, Chris, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Madeline Brozen (forthcoming). “Who lives in vehicles and why? Understanding vehicular homelessness in Los Angeles,” Housing Policy Debate. https://doi.org/10.1080/10511482.2022.2117990

2) Blumenberg, Evelyn and Madeline Wander (forthcoming). “Housing affordability and commute distance,” Urban Geography. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2022.2087319

3) Blumenberg, Evelyn and Fariba Siddiq (forthcoming). “Commute Distance and Jobs-Housing Fit,” Transportation. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-02210264-1

4) Giamarino, Chris, Madeline Brozen, and Evelyn Blumenberg (2023). “Planning for and against vehicular homelessness: Spatial trends and determinants of vehicular dwelling in Los Angeles,” Journal of the American Planning Association, 89(1): 80-92.

5) Schouten, Andrew, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Martin Wachs (2022, December). “Driving, Residential Location, and Employment Outcomes among Older Adults,” Journal of Applied Gerontology, 41(12): 2447-2458. https://doi.org/10.1177/07334648221120081

6) Blumenberg, Evelyn, Andrew Schouten, and Anne Brown (2022). “Who’s in the Driver’s Seat? Gender and the Division of Car Use in Auto-Deficit Households,” Transportation Research Part A, 162: 14-26.

7) Manville, Michael, Brian D. Taylor, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Andrew Schouten (2022). “Vehicle Access and Falling Transit Ridership: Evidence from Southern California,” Transportation. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-021-10245-w

8) Schouten, Andrew, Martin Wachs, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Hannah King (2022). “Cohort Analysis of Driving Cessation and Limitation Among Older Adults,” Transportation. 49: 841-865. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-021-10196-2

9) Schouten, Andrew, Evelyn Blumenberg, Martin Wachs, and Hannah King (2022). “Keys to the Car. Driving Cessation and Residential Location Among Older Adults,” Journal of the American Planning Association, 88(1): 3-14.

10) Schouten, Andrew, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Brian D. Taylor (2021). “Rating the Composition: Deconstructing the Demand-side Effects on Transit Use Changes in California,” Travel Behaviour and Society, 25: 18-26.

11) Blumenberg, Evelyn, Miriam Pinski, Lilly A. Nhan, and May C. Wang (2021). “Regional Differences in the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Food Sufficiency in California, April-July, 2020: Implications for Food Programs and Policies,” Public Health Nutrition. 24(11): 3442-3450, doi:10.1017/S1368980021001889

12) Blumenberg, Evelyn and Hannah King (2021). “Jobs-Housing Balance Re-Re-Visited,” Journal of the American Planning Association, 87(4): 484-496, doi:10.1080/01944363.2021.1880961

13) Blumenberg, Evelyn, Julene Paul and Greg Pierce (2021). “Travel in the Digital Age: Vehicle Ownership and Technology-Facilitated Accessibility,” Transport Policy, 103: 86-94.

14) Schouten, Andrew, Brian Taylor, and Evelyn Blumenberg (2021). “Who’s on Board? Examining the Changing Characteristics of Transit Riders Using Latent Profile Analysis,” Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2675(7): 1-10, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0361198120987225

15) Pollard, Jane, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Stephen Brumbaugh (2021). “Driven to Debt: Social Reproduction and (Auto)mobility in Los Angeles,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 111(5): 1445-1461, doi:10.1080/24694452.2020.1813541