Juan C. Jauregui

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Juan C. Jauregui, MSW, MPH is a PhD candidate in the Department of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. His research focuses on population mental health and health inequities among Latinx populations in the U.S. and LGBTQ+ populations in Latin America, with particular attention to HIV, stigma, and access to care. Grounded in social work and public health, his work examines how structural, institutional, and psychosocial processes shape health and mental health outcomes across global and U.S. settings using community-engaged, qualitative, and mixed-methods approaches.

His dissertation, “Why are you letting him die?”: Infrastructural Abandonment and the Unevenness of HIV Care in Peru, draws on in-depth qualitative fieldwork with healthcare providers across Lima and the Peruvian Amazon to examine how structural inequalities are translated into the organization of HIV care. This research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health through the Fogarty UCGHI GloCal Health Fellowship and the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship. His work aims to inform health systems strengthening and policy reforms that address structural inequities and advance more equitable resource distribution, challenging systems that produce uneven access to care and differential valuations of certain lives over others.

Throughout his doctoral training, Juan has advanced a global mental health research agenda that includes co-leading the launch of national surveys on LGBTQ+ youth mental health in Peru and the Philippines in collaboration with The Trevor Project. His work has been published in Cambridge Prisms: Global Mental Health, Archives of Sexual Behavior, LGBT Health, and American Journal of Community Psychology. He is a recipient of the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship and the NIMHD T37 LEAD Global Training Fellowship.

Prior to entering the doctoral program at UCLA, Juan earned his MSW and MPH from the University of Michigan, where he worked with the Resilience + Resistance Collective on LGBTQ+ mental health and sexual health projects in the United States, Kenya, Zambia, and the Dominican Republic. His professional background also includes research roles with the UCLA Adolescent Trials Network and as a trained crisis counselor with a national suicide prevention hotline.

Juan is a Mexican-American, first-generation college student. He earned his BS in Psychobiology from UCLA in 2017.

Selected Publications: 

Jauregui, J. C., Reyes-Diaz, M., León-Morris, F., Nath, R., Taylor, A. B., & Konda, K. A. (2026). Understanding suicide risk among LGBTQ+ youth in Peru: Findings from a nationwide mental health survey. Cambridge Prisms: Global Mental Health. 13, e50. doi: 10.1017/gmh.2026.10169

Jauregui, J. C., Lewis, K. A., Moore, D. M., Ogunbajo, A., Odero, W., Wambaya, J., Onyango, D. P., Jadwin-Cakmak, L., & Harper, G. W. (2025). “It kills the freedom or the spirit of people being who they are”: Impact of sexuality-based stigma and discrimination on the lives of gay and bisexual men in Kenya. Global Public Health, 20(1). doi: 10.1080/17441692.2025.2489713

Jauregui, J. C., Hong, G., Garner, A., Howell, S., & Holloway, I. W. (2025). Sexual behavior, app use, and venue comfort during COVID-19: A global study of gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men. The Journal of Sex Research, 1-7. doi: 10.1080/00224499.2025.2585071

Jauregui, J. C., & Harper, G. W. (2025) LGBTQ+ cultural sensitivity training for mental health professionals in the United States. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 54, 1309-1315. doi: 10.1007/s10508-025-03132-3

León-Morris, F. D., Reyes-Diaz, E. M., Jauregui, J. C., Konda, K. A., Taylor, A. B., Jarrett, B. A., Lee, W. Y., Muñoz, G., & Nath, R. (2024). 2024 Perú national report on the mental health of LGBTQ+ young people. The Trevor Project. Available at: https://thetrevorproject.org/survey-international/pe/2024/en/

Julia Lesnick

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Julia Lesnick is a doctoral candidate in social work whose scholarship centers on youth justice and the governance of youth crime. Her research investigates how policies and practices are developed, implemented, and experienced within systems that respond to young people in contact with the law. She focuses on institutional, organizational, and fiscal reforms to youth justice systems, and examines how these policy and practice changes impact youth and public safety.

Her dissertation, “Who governs a decentralized system of youth justice? Realignment, reform, and the battle to reimagine youth justice in California,” uses an in-depth case study of state and county implementation of California’s major 2020 juvenile justice reform bill. The project examines core questions around the governance, power, ideology and logistics of closing state youth prisons, and shifting towards a local model of custody and care for young people with serious, violent convictions.

Julia’s work also explores the broader social, economic, and political forces shaping youth justice. This includes research examining innovative policy and practice interventions such as guaranteed income programs and credible messenger mentoring. Additionally, she examines youth and community organizing to build power and shape youth justice reform agendas, including leading a study of youth voice with formerly incarcerated young people.

Julia is also a practitioner and advocate for justice. After earning her MSW in 2023, Julia became a restorative justice mediator. In this role, she guides youth, families, and harmed parties through structured dialogues aimed at accountability, healing, and diverting young people from formal system involvement. Prior to UCLA Julia served as an AmeriCorps VISTA at the NYC Division of Youth and Family Justice, and taught in a prison-based college degree program during her undergraduate studies at Cornell University.

Sawyer Hogenkamp

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Sawyer completed an M.Ed. in Human Development and Psychology at Harvard University. He also holds a M.Ed. and B.Ed. from Queen’s University, and B.A. from University of Waterloo, majoring in Music, and Human Geography & Environmental Management. He is pursuing a PhD to further the study of relational youth violence and school climate to encompass under-supervised contexts within and outside of school grounds, such as in neighborhoods, virtual spaces, or on school buses. He serves as a consultant with an organization in Canada that trains school bus drivers on bullying prevention and mental health awareness. He’s also engaged in supporting social emotional learning in underserved populations domestically (urban and rural America), and abroad (urban and rural China). Research skills include both qualitative and quantitative analysis as well as mixed methods, having participated with interdisciplinary research groups collaborating with Canadian Federal and Provincial Government Agencies, Universities, and private organizations. Currently Sawyer is working with the APA Taskforce on Violence Against Educators, organizing and analyzing data and policy of qualitative data from school psychologists, social workers, counselors, administrators, teachers, and school staff.

Kimberly Fuentes

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Kimberly Fuentes, MSW is a recent graduate of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs in Social Welfare. She is currently a first year PhD student in Social Welfare at Luskin where she studies the impacts of criminalization on sex working communities, the ways they resist criminalization, and the role that social work can play in uplifting this resistance. She hopes to utilize participatory action research and art-based methods to identify the alternative systems of community care that are used to mitigate and resist the forces of the police state and theorize the state from the vantage point of sex workers. She serves on the board of directors at the Sex Worker Outreach Project – Los Angeles (SWOP-LA) where she leads a nationwide support group for current and former sex workers and provides direct support to street-based workers through a harm reduction framework. Kimberly is a student affiliate of the California Center for Population Research (CCPR) and a recipient of the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship. She is currently a research assistant at the UCLA Hub for Health Intervention, Policy and Practice where she works on research studies exploring the effect of criminalization on violence and victimization of sex workers.

Kimberly earned her Master of Social Welfare in Social and Economic Justice with a certificate in Global Health and Social Services. During her time in the MSW program, Kimberly received the Graduate Opportunity Fellowship (GOFP) and served as a Luskin Leadership Fellow at the Office of Child Protection (OCP). Her completed research capstone, “Revolutionizing Community Under the Red Umbrella: Intersectional Inquiry with Sex Workers on Protective Factors in Los Angeles, CA”, received awards from the Center for the Study of Women’s Black Feminism Initiative, UCLA Lewis Center for Policy Research, Franklin D. Gilliam Jr. Social Justice Award, and a departmental award for outstanding research.

She is a proud first-generation student whose family immigrated from Oaxaca, Mexico. Prior to UCLA, she earned a B.A. in Environmental Studies and Geography with a minor in Math and Science education from UC Santa Barbara.

 

Jessica Bremner

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Jessica Bremner is a PhD candidate in Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests lie at the intersections of spatial justice, gender, housing, participatory practices, and democracy. Her dissertation research examines the processes that shape the spatial inequality of water access in the Coachella Valley. Jessica was awarded the Babbitt Dissertation Fellowship from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy to support this research.

Prior to entering the PhD program at UCLA, Jessica was the Planning Director of Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI), a non-profit community development and design firm based in Los Angeles, USA and Nairobi, Kenya. Jessica has coordinated, supervised, and implemented community development programs aimed at empowering communities around the world. Her projects have ranged in scope and scale from a on online portal to identify water and sanitation connections in Kibera, Kenya to a Play Street pilot project for the City of Los Angeles to the development of a 5-acre park in the Eastern Coachella Valley. She has led dozens of participatory workshops to design, build, and implement public space projects that address social, economic, and physical needs of low-income communities. Her projects and processes have been featured in the New York Times and exhibited at the Louisiana Art Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt in New York, USA. Her dissertation builds from six years of working in the Coachella Valley with KDI.

Before joining KDI, she assisted management and evaluation of the Inter-American Foundation’s Brazil and Ecuador grant portfolios and worked for the Planning Department of the City of West Hollywood. Jessica holds a Bachelor of Arts in Latin American Studies from Tulane University and dual Master of Arts in Urban Planning and Latin American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. Past research projects include examining informality and slum upgrading programs in Brazil and community-engaged research on unpermitted housing and displacement in Los Angeles.

Kate Watson

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Kate Watson is a doctoral candidate in Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She researches childhood trauma and well-being from an ecological perspective and using qualitative and quantitative methods. Her interests include trauma-informed approaches in settings, including child welfare and schools.  

Kate earned a Master of Social Welfare (MSW) with a concentration in Social and Economic Justice from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from American University in Washington, D.C. A passionate advocate for children and youth, Kate has served on the boards of Child Advocates of Silicon Valley and the Los Angeles Junior Chamber of Commerce, as chair of the LAJCC Foundation, and as a court-appointed special advocate (CASA) for foster youth.

ResearchGate Link here.

Website: https://www.krwatson.com

Carol A. Leung, LCSW

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Carol A. Leung’s research area is broadly focused on the areas of gun violence and suicide prevention. Her dissertation focuses on whether proximal and distal suicide risk factors are associated with firearm use for suicide by women in different age groups. In this work, Carol evaluates whether there are precipitating circumstances and life events that predispose women to suicide by firearms. This research is of particular importance given the complexity of gun violence in the United States as well as the rising suicide rates among women.

Carol has advanced training in research methods and theory development and is particularly skilled in conducting quantitative research with large data sets, including the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention’s National Violent Death Reporting System. She has published her research in peer-reviewed journals, including International Social Work and the Journal of Aging & Social Policy. Recently, Carol published a manuscript entitled “Deploying an Ecological Model to Stem the Rising Tide of Firearm Suicide in Older Age.” Carol has taught or assisted in teaching courses for undergraduate and graduate students at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs since 2015. These include classes in health policy, aging and diversity, adult psychopathology, firearm violence, human behavior and the social environment, and research methods. Additionally, she has worked on three grant-funded projects in her area of research and presented at 11 conferences and workshops.

Carol is a licensed clinical social worker. Prior to UCLA, she worked as a psychotherapist at Flushing Hospital Outpatient Mental Health Clinic in New York City serving immigrant and refugee populations. Carol has six other publications in clinical training guides and book chapters on topics related to multicultural skills and mental health interventions. She graduated with honors from the University of Texas at Austin in Psychology with a Business Administration minor in 2009.

Leung, C.A. (2014). Bye-bye bullies. In M. Cheung, Therapeutic games and guided imagery Volume II: Working with children, adolescents and families with special needs and in multicultural settings (A13). Chicago, IL: Lyceum Books.

Cheung, M., & Leung, C.A. (To be published in 2019). Social-cultural and ecological perspective. In R. Ow & A. Poon (Eds.), Mental health and Social Work. New York, NY: Springer.

Ashleigh Herrera

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Ashleigh Herrera’s research focuses on the treatment of co-occurring psychiatric and substance use disorders in minority populations.

This research endeavor seeks to provide insight into population characteristics related to experiences with trauma and psychiatric conditions in order to guide practice and policy related to the provision of SUD treatment services for patients and the importance of integrated treatment for trauma, PTSD, and other psychiatric conditions.

Her dissertation utilizes secondary data in order to examine the role of lifetime experiences of trauma and psychiatric conditions and distress on residential substance use disorder (SUD) treatment outcomes for patients with Medi-Cal in Los Angeles County

Ms. Herrera specializes in quantitative methodology and program evaluation. She has training in

the following software systems: ARC-GIS, SPSS, and NVivo. She has worked as a research assistant for faculty members at UCLA as well as the University of Houston, Graduate College of Social Work, culminating in several publications in peer-reviewed journals, such as Social Work and the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health. She has presented her work at both national and international social work conferences, including in Hong Kong and Sweden. Ms. Herrera has taught undergraduate courses at UCLA. These have included classes in aging and human behavior in the social environment.

Additionally, Ms. Herrera has worked in direct clinical practice since 2015. In 2017, she obtained her LCSW. She is currently working as the onsite clinician at a residential SUD treatment facility. In this capacity, she conducts assessments, develops treatment plans, provides individual counseling, facilitates psychoeducational groups, trains AOD counselors, and collaborates with

DMH, SAPC, DCFS, and DOC to address the needs of her patients.

Prior to entering the doctoral program at UCLA, Ms. Herrera graduated at the top of her class from the MSW program at the University of Houston, Graduate College of Social Work, where she focused on Macro Practice and obtained a specialization in Trabajo Social (Social Work Practice with Latinos). During her MSW program, she completed internships in Houston, Texas, and Hong Kong. She also served as the President of the Hispanic Student Association. In 2010, she graduated Cum Laude with her bachelor’s degree in History and minor Sociology from the University of Houston.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

“Factors Contributing to Depressive Symptoms among Mexican Americans and Latinos”

“The Perceived Role of Family in Heroin Use Behaviors of Mexican-American Men.”

Lia W. Marshall

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Lia W. Marshall’s research focuses on older adult well-being. She is particularly interested in understanding prolonged independence and ability to age in place by investigating the interconnections between social isolation, mobility, and the built environment. Lia’s mixed methods dissertation, situated at the nexus of social welfare, gerontology and urban planning, seeks to understand the mobility experiences of socially isolated older adult women. This research is an important step in guiding policymakers to effectively allocate resources to enable aging in place and to enhance the lives of older women.

While Lia has training in both quantitative and qualitative research methods, she is particularly skilled in employing qualitative methodologies. In collaboration with faculty in both UCLA’s Urban Planning and Social Welfare Departments, she has served as a graduate research assistant for several projects, including “Disrupting Aging & Building Livable Communities: Los Angeles”, and with The Los Angeles Community Academic Partnership for Research in Aging (L.A. CAPRA). Lia has presented her work at conferences across academic disciplines, and has taught and guest lectured with both master’s students and undergraduates. Lia’s interests in social welfare, gerontology and urban planning inspired her to develop and teach the course entitled: “Environmentally Sustainable Aging: Diversity, Resilience, and Health” as a teaching fellow at UCLA.

In addition to teaching, Ms. Marshall continues her community engagement work with the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust as a Steering Committee member for Golden Age Park, the first intergenerational park in Los Angeles, and as the Service Learning Coordinator for the UCLA undergraduate gerontology cluster. Lia received a Masters of Social Work from California State University, Los Angeles and a Bachelors of Arts in Psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz.