Despite Ongoing Meningitis Outbreak, Vaccination Among Gay Men Remains Low Limited 2-dose completion among HIV-positive men puts them at particular risk, new study shows

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Despite a yearlong outbreak of invasive meningococcal disease in Southern California primarily affecting gay and bisexual men, less than 27 percent of men who have sex with men (MSM) in Los Angeles County have been vaccinated for meningitis.

The findings released Thursday, March 30, 2017, by the California HIV/AIDS Policy Research Centers in collaboration with the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, the Los Angeles LGBT Center and APLA Health call for more education about the disease and more places offering immunization throughout Southern California at venues where gay and bisexual men socialize.

More than 500 men were interviewed about their knowledge of the meningitis outbreak by UCLA Luskin’s Ian Holloway, an assistant professor in the Department of Social Welfare, and teams of researchers who visited venues throughout Los Angeles County. Most of the canvassers were current UCLA students or recent graduates.

“Our rapid-response research suggests that coordinated efforts to standardize data collection about sexual practices in conjunction with immunization will enable better tracking of meningitis vaccination among gay and bisexual men,” said Holloway, who is also the director of the Southern California HIV/AIDS Policy Research Center.

Meningococcal disease is often characterized with sudden onset of high fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, rash, stiff neck and confusion, which can lead to rapid septic shock and death if not treated quickly. Vaccination is highly effective and can prevent the disease. The current outbreak in Southern California is the second in the area in recent history. A 2014 meningitis outbreak led to the deaths of three gay men in their 20s.

Despite the outbreak and vaccination recommendations from the California Department of Public Health, the majority of respondents interviewed by the UCLA team were not protected against meningitis.

Holloway noted that HIV-positive people are at particular risk for developing serious health issues if infected with meningitis and are recommended to receive a two-dose primary series of meningitis vaccination. Few HIV-positive men surveyed by Holloway’s team had received two doses of the vaccination.

“Primary care doctors who treat gay and bisexual men and HIV-positive people should talk to their patients about the ongoing outbreak and make sure they receive the full recommended dosing,” said Phil Curtis, director of government affairs at APLA Health.

The study praises the efforts of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Immunization Program, which distributed free vaccines, and of participating community-based organizations such as AIDS Healthcare Foundation and the LA LGBT Center, but researchers concluded that more needs to be done.

In addition to Holloway, study authors include Elizabeth Wu and Jennifer Gildner from the Southern California HIV/AIDS Policy Research Center, and Vincent Fenimore and Paula Frew from Emory University.

Learn more about Ian Holloway and the meningitis study in this video:

Honored for Contributions to Gerontology and Geriatrics Education UCLA Luskin adjunct professor emerita JoAnn Damron-Rodriguez is recognized as a leading educator in the field of aging

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By Stan Paul

JoAnn Damron-Rodriguez, adjunct professor emerita of social welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, has become the first UCLA faculty member to receive the Clark Tibbitts Award from the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education (AGHE).

Damron-Rodriguez received the 2017 award, which is given each year to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of gerontology and geriatrics education, at the Washington, D.C.-based AGHE’s annual meeting held March 10, 2017, in Miami. The award honors Clark Tibbetts (1903-1985) as an architect of the field of gerontological education.

AGHE, which has bestowed the award annually since 1981, is dedicated to education, training and research programs in the field of aging, and counts more than 160 institutional members throughout the United States, Canada and abroad.

In accepting the award, Damron-Rodriguez, a licensed clinical social worker who earned master’s and Ph.D. degrees in social welfare at UCLA, delivered a lecture titled, “Gerontology: Cultural Change, Competence and Creativity.”

“Gerontologists are taking the lead worldwide to build, with our communities, the future of purposeful living for the 50-plus population,” said Damron-Rodriguez, who has previously received UCLA’s Distinguished Teaching Award. She is a federally appointed member of the Veteran’s Health Administration Gerontology and Geriatrics Advisory Committee.

On the Job Training UCLA Luskin alumni return to campus to share career insights and tips with students seeking full-time and summer work

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By Zev Hurwitz

With second-year Luskin students searching for career opportunities and first-year students looking to lock in summer placements, the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs presented an alumni panel to give timely advice about what types of jobs might be out there in the public service sector.

At an evening panel discussion hosted by Luskin School Career Services on March 9, 2017, alumni of all three UCLA Luskin master’s programs spoke about working professionally with local governments and how their degrees opened those careers as possibilities.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, a guest lecturer of public policy at UCLA Luskin, spoke about the opportunities for students to engage in public service. Photo by Aaron Julian

Former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who has taught as a visiting professor at the Luskin School each winter for more than 20 years, spoke about the opportunities for Luskin students to engage in public service, and he challenged the audience — mostly current Luskin students — to make strides in addressing the world’s issues.

“Five-sixths of the world today is conflict-free,“ Dukakis said. “The challenge now is how do we get the remaining one-sixth to join the other five-sixths? I just hope that, in addition to everything else you’re doing, you’ll be working hard for that kind of future.”

Five UCLA Luskin alumni spoke on the panel, which was moderated by Emily C. Williams MPP ’98, a member of Luskin’s first-ever graduating Master of Public Policy class. Williams noted that the panel’s academic diversity demonstrated the value in having cross-educational opportunities for current students, and she encouraged the audience to enroll in courses in other disciplines.

“It’s really nice that we have this great array of talent from all three departments in the school,” Williams said. “What was nice, for those of us who took classes outside our department, is that we really got to know some of the people outside of our programs, which lends itself to great working relationships.”

Paul Weinberg MPP ’98 is now emergency services administrator in the Office of Emergency Management for the City of Santa Monica. Weinberg spoke about how his schooling — Dukakis’ course in particular — gave him important insight into professionalism.

“Always return your phone calls — I cannot tell you how important that is,” Weinberg said. “You’ve got to find a way to acknowledge people reaching out to you,” attributing that advice to Dukakis. “Also, never say or write anything you don’t want to see on the cover of the L.A. Times. If you think about that now, that is more important than ever because [if] you put something out there in social media, it’s everywhere.”

Nahatahna Cabanes MSW ’13 is director of the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program at L.A. Works. As a former Bohnett Fellow, Cabanes had the opportunity to work in the administration of former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa while a student at Luskin. She said her current job is different from her role in the mayor’s office, but both jobs speak to her interests.

“It’s because I’m a little bit bipolar in term of my interests that I still have the compassion that drove me to social work, but at the same time, I’m a community organizer at heart and I love the world of politics,” Cabanes said. “I sort of balance between the macro and the micro.”

Molly Rysman MA UP ’05 is now the housing and homelessness deputy for Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl. Rysman discussed her experience bringing a priority issue to the mainstream of local politics.

“When I joined [Rysman’s] office, I worked really hard during her campaign to educate both her and her challenger that homelessness was an important issue — because back then you had to actually tell elected officials to care about homelessness,” she said. “Now I get to work on an issue that’s top of the agenda.”

Also serving on the panel were Daniel Rodman MURP ’14, now transportation manager in Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office, and Everado Alvizo MSW ’08, a former Bohnett Fellow who now works as a project coordinator and registered associate clinical social worker for Special Service for Groups.

VC Powe, director of career services and leadership development at Luskin, said that giving opportunities for current students to engage with alumni is critical in providing a realistic idea of what life after UCLA will be like.

“When we have representatives from an organization talk about their work, they’re going to give you all of the formal, appropriate ‘yes-you-need-to-know’ detailed background about the organization,” Powe said. “When you’re talking to an alum, they’re also going to give you the inside story and they’re going to be honest. The alum knows what the students have learned here, so they can tell them how to tailor their experience to the jobs they’re seeking. I think that’s a very important difference.”

 

 

Language, Power and What Resistance Looks Like Institute on Inequality and Democracy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs co-sponsors talk by UC Berkeley scholar Judith Butler

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By Stan Paul

“We are the people. The mighty, mighty people. Fighting for justice and liberation …”

Signs and songs preceded the talk at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Photo by Aaron Julian

Signs and song — the trappings of traditional protest — served as prelude to a talk by UC Berkeley scholar Judith Butler at a gathering titled, “This is What Resistance Looks Like,” on Feb. 15, 2017, at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

For Butler, the Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at Berkeley, contemporary resistance in a time of “shared uncertainty” may not look exactly like your parent’s or grandparent’s form of protest.

“The de-politicized public needs to be re-politicized,” she said, arguing that “the people have to consent … and have the power to withdraw consent.”

Citing the recent presidential election’s low overall voter turnout, Butler emphasized the importance of figuring out how to “bring the non-voter back into politics.” For her it raised further questions such as, “Who are the people and what is the popular will?”

Butler, who is active in human rights issues, as well as gender and sexual politics, also joined a panel of scholars to provide her “thoughts in progress” about the possible forms that resistance might take in a new political era.

In pondering this, Butler said traditional protests and the presence of large crowds in the streets — such as during the January Women’s March on Washington — may continue, but resistance may also come from unexpected places. “We will have to fight for a very strong freedom of the press,” she said, noting that news media have been under attack from the new president.

UC Berkeley scholar Judith Butler spoke about the resistance movement and recent political events. Photo by Les Dunseith

“Opposition is one term that suggests that our political structures are basically intact,” she said. “Now we’re in some different kind of trouble. The fear we have, I think, is that we’re actually fighting now for the conditions in which oppositional parties and movements still make sense. … That’s why the name of this fight has to be resistance.”

The other panelists who joined Butler after her talk are all members of a UCLA faculty group known as RAVE (Resistance Against Violence Through Education): Gil Hochberg, professor of comparative literature and gender studies at UCLA; Laure Murat, director of the Center for European and Russian Studies at UCLA and professor in the Department of French and Francophone Studies; and Ananya Roy, professor of social welfare and urban planning and director of the Institute for Inequality and Democracy at the Luskin School.

“Authoritarianism finds its home in language but has not yet found itself in law and policy,” Roy said. “How should we think about the ways in which we have already, in these first few moments, come to rely on the law or come to rely on the lack of accomplishment of authoritarian power in law and policy? It’s a broad question.”

 

Power and Powerlessness in Social Work UCLA Luskin professor and alumna receive Social Science Review’s 2017 Frank R. Breul Memorial Prize for social welfare research on professional power relations

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By Stan Paul

Knowledge may be power, but professional power for those in fields such as social work can be jeopardized by organizational settings.

For their research on this topic, Luskin alumna Eve Garrow MSW ’03, Ph.D. ’08 and social welfare distinguished research professor Yeheskel “Zeke” Hasenfeld have been named winners of the 2017 Frank R. Breul Memorial Prize by Social Service Review (SSR), a publication of the University of Chicago Press.

In their 2016 case study, “When Professional Power Fails: A Power Relations Perspective,” Garrow and Hasenfeld explain how social workers, when making important decisions for chronically homeless individuals in permanent supportive housing, can find their professional expertise undermined by the interests of external stakeholders who give priority to property management over social services.

“The study exposes the powerlessness of homeless people and their social workers in the homeless services field,” said Hasenfeld, who studies homelessness, poverty and welfare as well as nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations.

In their study, Garrow, currently the homeless policy analyst and advocate for the ACLU of Southern California’s Dignity for All Project, and Hasenfeld find that conflicts arose at “critical clinical decision junctures” for residents whose housing needs involved participation of social workers and property managers.

“Decisions such as those that deny acceptance to the program, sanction clients for behavior related to their disabilities, or initiate eviction proceedings, are critical because they influence the well-being of the clients; they either provide them with or deprive them of scarce and valued organizational resources,” the researchers wrote. Yet, the interests of the property managers prevailed over the professional judgment of the social workers.

Garrow and Hasenfeld said that their findings led them to ask questions such as how property managers, who lack educational professional credentials, could overrule social workers and their professional judgment. They added that a power relations perspective was overlooked in research in human service organizations and that a power relations perspective can provide a strong explanatory model to understanding of organizational that affect the ability of social workers to exercise their ethics-bound professional expertise.

The study found that a power relations perspective:

  • Offers a valuable lens through which to understand the periodic and yet systematic disempowerment of professional social workers
  • Can be generalized when applied to human service organizations to provide a better understanding of the structural conditions that influence the distribution and exercise of power among different occupational groups within the organization and how these influence organizational practices.
  • Reveals the structural conditions that lead vulnerable groups, such as homeless persons, to become powerless clients in organizations.

The authors, who conducted their research over a two-year period, conclude that in order to exercise their professional power, social workers need to forge alliances with stakeholders who share their values and have the power to influence social policy and programs that promote the interest and well-being of vulnerable clients who are powerless within organizations.

“This is part of a larger project to provide the empirical basis for the advancement of human rights for vulnerable and marginalized populations,” Hasenfeld said.

The Frank R. Breul Memorial Prize, established by the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago, honors the career of its namesake, including his service as editor of SSR. The prize, awarded annually, is for the best article published in SSR within a given year and comes with a $1,000 stipend and announcement in the March 2017 issue of SSR, according to Mark Courtney, the current editor.

Luskin Lecture to Peer Into Future of an Aging America Speaker Jo Ann Jenkins seeks to ‘disrupt aging’ with a fresh outlook on the nation’s increasingly older population – and how society will change as a result

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By Les Dunseith

Thanks to advances in medicine, the number of Americans age 65 or older is expected to double in the next 25 years, and the oldest of the old – those 85 and older – now constitute the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population, according to the National Institute on Aging.

Coping with the societal impact of this demographic reality is a challenge that “we find ourselves woefully unprepared” to deal with, said UCLA Luskin urban planning professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, who is also UCLA’s associate provost for academic planning. “Most seniors live in cities, but the cities are not really designed, planned or developed for them.”

New policies will be needed to successfully adjust to an aging population, and a key player in helping to shape those policies is the next Meyer and Renee Luskin Lecture speaker, AARP’s Jo Ann Jenkins. She is the CEO of an influential national organization that has more than 37 million members over age 50.

During her lecture at Skirball Cultural Center at 6 p.m. on Feb. 7, Jenkins will talk about the transformation of AARP into a leader in social change, dedicated to enhancing quality of life for people as they age.

“She will convey very clearly that older adults are equal citizens who have a right to expect the same rights and benefits and amenities from cities as other groups,” Loukaitou-Sideris said. “This is not yet happening. The onus is on the people who are the city builders, the policymakers, the planners, the politicians.”

Because those are the types of people who work and study at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, hosting a visit by Jenkins was a natural fit. But her presentation about AARP will also be of interest to staff, faculty and students in many other departments on campus.

“UCLA is the premier university when it comes to geriatrics and the biomedical side of gerontology,” said Fernando Torres-Gil, professor of social welfare and public policy. “UCLA, as a university, has tremendous research strength in issues of aging.”

The Luskin Lecture by Jenkins is an example of a growing relationship between the university and AARP that was fostered by Torres-Gil over the past few years while he served on the organization’s board of directors.

AARP is “beginning to understand what we can do for them,” he said about UCLA. “In a nation becoming old and moving to majority-minority status, AARP needs to take a leadership role in responding to multicultural populations and the nexus with aging.”

California, and Los Angeles in particular, present a perfect opportunity for organizations such as AARP to achieve a better understanding of the needs of older Americans from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. One aspect of that effort is a $300,000 grant from AARP to help fund the research of faculty members such as Loukaitou-Sideris, whose studies of the public environment in and around cities have previously noted shortcomings related to the needs of older residents.

For example, because of a lack of public transit options, many elderly people are reluctant to give up driving their cars even when continuing to do so presents a safety concern for themselves and others.

“The truth of the matter is that American cities, and especially West Coast cities that have built so much around the automobile, are not age-friendly cities,” Loukaitou-Sideris said.

Not only are people living longer, but their expectations for quality of life are changing as well. This notion of re-thinking what it means to grow old is one that Jenkins has championed since she became the leader of AARP in 2014, and it is the core message of the bestselling book, “Disrupt Aging,” that will also serve as the topic for her UCLA lecture at Skirball Cultural Center.

In Jenkins’ view, people need to challenge the negative stories often associated with getting older. Her book chronicles Jenkins’ own journey, as well as those of other individuals who are working to change what it means to age in America.

Jenkins has been described as a visionary and thought leader, a catalyst for breakthrough results, accelerating progress and contribution while fostering positive relationships inside and outside her organization, according to Tammy Borrero, UCLA Luskin’s director of events.

The societal evolution that Jenkins and AARP envision cannot be accomplished through words alone, of course. “You want to disrupt aging – this can be your desire – but you really need to have design, planning and policy in place to do that,” Loukaitou-Sideris said. “And that’s where UCLA Luskin comes in.”

Jenkins’ UCLA Luskin Lecture is free and open to all, but an advance RSVP is required for admittance. Details can be found here.

Responding to the Call in a ‘Post-Truth’ World Presented by UCLA Luskin’s Institute on Inequality and Democracy, ‘From the Frontlines of Justice’ and other J18 events demonstrate how ‘places of learning will not bear silent witness’

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By Stan Paul

Teach! Organize! Resist!

That was the call by organizers of J18, a daylong exercise of teaching and learning at UCLA, as a response to the uncertainty and fear of many people surrounding the transfer of power to a new U.S. administration.

The Jan. 18, 2017, event, positioned between Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the presidential inauguration, was planned as “an opportunity to mobilize the power of knowledge and the creativity of the arts” to challenge the new administration and its stated ideals, said Ananya Roy, director of the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and lead organizer of an evening event titled “From the Frontlines of Justice.”

There is “new, powerful work to be done” said Peter Sellars, a UCLA professor of World Arts and Cultures and director of opera, theater and film. Photo by Yasaman Boromand

“The politics of exclusion and isolation are all around us,” Roy told the overflow audience at UCLA’s Ackerman Grand Ballroom in her opening remarks. “Here in the United States … we face the systematic dismantling of environmental regulations, of newly won labor rights, hard-won civil rights, of the first scaffolding of national health care and the last vestiges of social protection,” she said, adding that the purpose of the evening was to “learn to listen and reflect and to do so with love and respect.”

And the J18 call was heard, said Roy, who is also a professor of Urban Planning and Social Welfare at the Luskin School. “J18 is made up of a multitude of actions, teach-ins, discussions, performances, rallies — nearly 100 of them — from American University to UC Santa Cruz, from Rome to Singapore, here in L.A., at Skid Row, at CalArts, Cal State LA, Caltech, USC and of course here at UCLA,” she said. With a smile, she added that her favorite J18 event was Elementary School Kids for Equality, which organized a march at UCLA “complete with music, fun … and snacks.”

Patrisse Cullors, UCLA alumna and co-founder of #Black Lives Matter, started by checking in with the audience in anticipation of the political transition two days away. “How ya doing? How are you coping?” asked the artist, organizer and founder and board member of Dignity and Power Now.

“We know that when someone becomes the president of the U.S. they become the president of the world,” said the L.A. native, who wondered what the response should be. “Do we go back into our classrooms? Do we go back to our homes? No, we need to be in the streets. We need to be mobilizing and we need to be organizing, and at this point in history we need to have the most innovative and creative approaches.”

Jeff Chang, a cultural critic who writes about race, music and politics and is executive director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University, said, “We’re weary, we know of the fight ahead, and it’s having to demand our place in the world again.” The co-founder of CultureStr/ke and ColorLines said his most recent work has included writing about cycles of crisis.

“When it comes to race in this country we seemed to be to caught in this permanent cycle of crisis,” Chang said. “It’s like climate change, the cultural wars — they seem to be an enduring feature of our daily lives. It’s a permanent fog that covers everything.”

Peter Sellars, a UCLA professor of World Arts and Cultures and director of opera, theater and film, said that there is “new, powerful work to be done,” describing the challenge as a “new discipline,” while reminding everyone that “none of this started a few weeks ago.”

The MacArthur Fellowship recipient said, “It’s time for a new set of solidarities and for actually crossing the line,” adding that while others may have voted a different way and might hold “very scary ideas,” the point is “not to mirror back the demonization.” Instead, “the point is to insist on equal humanity, and that means equal humanity of people who disagree with you on absolutely everything.”

Migrant and activist Ilse Escobar’s presentation started with her own emotional and harrowing story, one she said represents many who like her were not born in the U.S., and whose futures have always been uncertain but may be in jeopardy now.

The UCLA alumna spoke of her own experience crossing as a child into the United States to escape abject poverty. “I remember walking the border with my mom and my sister … I remember getting into the trunk of the car and coming here and starting kindergarten and knowing illegality intimately … 5 years old knowing I had a secret to hide.”

She recalled applying for college without a social security number, being accepted and not being able to pay for school.

And, while gains were made during the previous administration, she said that the fear of deportation has always been there and remains. “So I knew then, as a conscious political being, that what really mattered was organizing, that I could come back here to my comrades that are here in the room and work some of that out and figure out what to do next.”

In addition to the messages shared in words, song and dance, the audience of students, faculty, organizers and advocates also viewed a video narrated by Roy titled “3 Truths About Trumpism,” which Roy begins with the definition of “post-truth,” the Oxford English Dictionary’s choice for 2016 word of the year.

“Truth is out of fashion. Truth is past its expiration date,” Roy says in the animated feature that has already been viewed thousands of times online.

The J18 message was also delivered through performances, including the poetry of feminist, essayist and poet Erika L. Sánchez, the daughter of undocumented Mexican immigrants, and Bryonn Bain, artist/activist and creator of “Lyrics From Lockdown,” who pumped up the audience with presentations of spoken word and powerful lyrical performances accompanied by bass and cello. Concluding the program was hip-hop artist Maya Jupiter, whose rousing musical performance included a song with a refrain that effectively summarized the evening: “They tried to bury us; they didn’t know we were seeds.”

Roy said that J18 is meant to go beyond the one evening. As a collective endeavor, “J18 is both a platform of interconnection and solidarity,” Roy said. “It will be up to all of us to put it to good use in the coming months and years.

“Our J18 call is an insistence that places of teaching and learning will not bear silent witness, that we will stand up for those among us who are the most vulnerable that we will defend the academic freedom to examine with courage the stockpiling of wealth and power,” Roy added. “That we will not be bullied into quiet acquiescence with ignorance, hate and fear.”

The crowd included Lolly Lim, a first-year master of urban and regional planning student at the Luskin School who was also among a packed classroom for an earlier J18 event at the Luskin School — an exercise on “Envisioning Compassionate Cities.” The session included collaboration between students and faculty from the Department of Urban Planning.

Urban planning student Lolly Lim listens as faculty members talk about the need for planners to be inclusive of all types of people. Photo by Les Dunseith

In the exercise, Lim and the other students were asked to imagine what future cities might look like, what social justice values they would encompass and what problems they would solve. Ideas generated by the exercise were grounded in a working definition of compassion — “the response to the suffering of others that motivates an actual desire to help.”

Lim said she appreciated the opportunity to sit at the same table with faculty and work on the problems together.

The event was introduced by Vinit Mukhija, the newly installed chair of urban planning, and facilitated by new urban planning faculty member Kian Goh; Gilda Haas, longtime urban planning instructor and founder of the department’s Community Scholars program; and Kiara Nagel, program associate from the Center for Story-Based Strategy.

As part of the session, the students and faculty participated in a thought exercise to “remember when” — looking back from a future reference point — and framing aspirational ideas such as “remember when we all got along, everyone had free healthcare, everyone had access to food and all people were safe in cities and no individuals were dispossessed?” Questions such as how to make cities “spaces of hope” and how to “prototype radical ideas” were brought up as work groups focused on imagining alternate visions of urban space.

The students’ ideas of the future were generated on multicolored post-it notes, represented graphically on paper and in three dimensions. Mukhija said that he hoped that the exercise would serve as inspiration for further exploration of these topics in similar future events.

For J18, the Institute on Inequality and Democracy was the lead organizer, joined by RAVE (Resistance Against Violence through Education), UCLA; UCLA Department of African-American Studies; UCLA Department of Chicana/o Studies; UCLA Institute of American Cultures; Justice Work Group, UCLA; UCLA Labor Center; UCLA LGBTQ Studies; and The Undercommons.

Taking the Fight for LGBT Health Equity to the Streets Late-night canvassing to assess a meningitis outbreak exemplifies the dedication that has earned UCLA Luskin Social Welfare professor Ian Holloway national recognition for his groundbreaking research

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By Les Dunseith

It’s the Tuesday night before Christmas as UCLA Luskin professor Ian W. Holloway tucks his 2-year-old daughter Sofía into bed and prepares to leave his home on a tree-lined street of bungalow-style houses in the Larchmont neighborhood of Los Angeles.

It’s time for Holloway, an assistant professor in the Department of Social Welfare, to get back to work.

Along with three UCLA student researchers, Holloway will spend the next several hours in West Hollywood doing legwork for his latest research project. Their task will be to find and interview gay and bisexual men outside popular nightspots and discover how much they know about an ongoing meningitis outbreak and the steps that health officials have taken to battle it.

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This type of time-consuming, on-the-ground research is par for the course for Holloway, who serves as the director of the UCLA Luskin-based Southern California HIV/AIDS Policy Research Center and is currently juggling four major research efforts related to his expertise in health disparities among sexual and gender minority populations. Holloway’s dedication and his innovative methods recently led the Society of Social Work Research (SSWR) to select him for its Deborah K. Padgett Early Career Achievement Award, presented in January 2017 during the organization’s national conference in New Orleans.

“This is our primary professional society,” Holloway says about the honor, which recognizes social work research completed during the recipient’s first decade after earning a doctoral degree. “They give just one a year at the society’s big professional meeting.”

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UCLA Luskin students Jorge Rojas and Christine Munoz listen as Ian Holloway outlines the agenda as another night of research gets underway. Photo by Les Dunseith

On this night, however, the meningitis study takes precedence. Outside the Urth Caffé, Holloway helps the student researchers establish a “line” — in this case basically a crevice in the sidewalk — at the corner of Melrose Avenue and Westmount Drive. One or more of the students then approaches any man who crosses that line, asking them to participate in the research effort by spending 20 minutes answering survey questions using an iPad.

In the first half-hour, however, only one man who meets the study’s criteria has been successfully interviewed. Holloway and his research team are trying to complete about 500 interviews for the project by February, and foot traffic is just too light to continue at the site. So they move on to the next venue that has been randomly preselected for this night’s canvassing effort — the Motherlode, a tavern with removable walls that proudly shows off its dive-bar atmosphere to passersby along Santa Monica Boulevard.

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The thought of an academic research project centered around bar hopping in West Hollywood until 2 a.m. may seem incongruous, but it’s a proven research approach that works particularly well when the target audience is gay and bisexual men in Los Angeles County, including those who are HIV positive. During a meningitis outbreak that has led to two deaths in Southern California since it was first reported last spring, the researchers need to go where those who are most at risk can reliably be found.

UCLA Luskin student researchers Ryan Dougherty and Christine Munoz use digital devices to establish a survey zone. Photo by Les Dunseith

“We use a strategy called venue-based sampling,” Holloway explains. “It’s a systematic sampling strategy that is one of the best ways we know for how to approximate generalizability among gay and bisexual men.”

Holloway’s meningitis study is funded as part of a four-year, $4-million grant from the California HIV/AIDS Research Program to produce “what we call rapid response research,” he says. The idea is to complete research within months, not years, related to timely policy issues that impact people living with HIV or AIDS in California.

As noted on its website, CHPRC.org, the center works closely with community partners from AIDS Project Los Angeles Health and the Los Angeles LGBT Center to tailor research efforts to match urgent needs within the LGBTQ communities.

“We get community input, synthesize that and then set an agenda for policy research,” Holloway explains.

He took over the center’s leadership last April from Arleen Leibowitz, professor emeritus of public policy at UCLA Luskin, and feels fortunate to conduct research efforts that directly arise from community interaction.

“Models of funding like this aren’t widely available, so we are lucky to have a center here at UCLA, and we are lucky to have had it for seven years,” he says. “We want to continue to do this work and be able to conduct research that is driven by the community and that directly benefit the community.”

The meningitis study resulted from a meeting in October at which about 40-50 advocates, health workers and social service providers from across Southern California came to Los Angeles to talk about the needs of people in the local LGBTQ communities.

“These are people who are working with HIV-positive clients, who are doing prevention work,” Holloway says of the attendees. The meeting gave them an opportunity to think about and debate the issues most affecting their communities. The researchers primarily were there to listen and help structure projects that could be completed in a rapid response timeframe to produce data that would actually benefit those communities.

“It is … very much aligned with the mission of Luskin and the mission of the Department of Social Welfare,” Holloway notes.

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Ian Holloway discusses where to relocate with his survey team when one of their preselected research sites proves unworkable. Photo by Les Dunseith

Back in West Hollywood, the Motherlode proves unworkable as a survey venue on this night. A private party is booked at the site, but it won’t start for a couple of hours and the survey team can’t afford to simply bide time waiting.

Holloway, ever cheerful no matter the hurdle he faces, quickly gathers his team to discuss their options. Proceed to the next pre-selected venue? Or go just around the corner to the “emergency backup” site, the Abbey, a 25-year-old West Hollywood landmark that has been voted the best gay bar in the world.

Within minutes, the team is in place outside the Abbey, and all three student researchers are actively engaged in recruiting potential survey respondents.

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To gather enough surveys to produce statistically valid results by their deadline, Holloway has put together a rotating team of about 10 UCLA student workers, assisted occasionally by a couple of alumni who help out during staffing shortfalls. The majority are current Luskin master of social welfare students, but two are in a Ph.D. program.

“There’s lots of exciting work going on,” Holloway says with a broad smile. “And we have a fantastic team at UCLA supporting it.”

The data being gathered now will be analyzed by March to inform a research brief that should help California produce better outreach and better programs centered around meningitis vaccination for this population. The student workers collecting the information were carefully screened during a selection process led by Holloway’s research manager, Elizabeth Wu.

“We are looking for people who are obviously outgoing and who understand the importance of collecting good quality data,” says Holloway, whose own affable manner permeates the research effort. The canvassers, who refer to Holloway mostly by his first name, also need to be comfortable staying out to the wee hours to chat with strangers they encounter outside bars and clubs.

The iPad-based surveys are completed by the researchers based on respondents’ answers. Photo by Les Dunseith

For researcher Christine Munoz, a first-year MSW student who got her undergraduate degree at UC Riverside, the learning process was frenetic at first, but also rewarding.

“It is very new to me because I wasn’t really involved in the LGBTQ community previously,” she says during a break during the canvassing effort. “I am learning so much from this community. So, it’s broadening my skills, my social work skills. Now I can work with clients who are from the LGBT community. I am learning so much as a future social worker.”

The survey teams have been on the job since November, gathering data that Holloway says will either confirm or refute the notions that helped form the basis of the survey hypothesis.

For example, there is a feeling that the distribution of meningitis vaccine to the targeted community “is pretty haphazard,” Holloway says. “There isn’t always a good refrigeration system for the vaccine at community clinics; health workers aren’t always tracking how many doses have been given.”

Without a systematic infrastructure in place to promote the wellbeing of these men, health officials often find themselves in a defensive posture when dealing with outbreaks of vaccine-preventable illnesses among HIV-positive men or men at high risk for HIV. “It shouldn’t take an outbreak for us to realize this is a priority community,” Holloway says.

His passion to understand and promote better health options for LGBTQ communities is an outgrowth of Holloway’s life experience. He was raised in Northern California during the early years of the HIV crisis in America. His parents’ generation saw an entire community of gay men decimated, almost wiped out by AIDS.

“Growing up and knowing that I was gay, and hearing and seeing what happened close by in San Francisco, I think it was pretty impactful for my young life,” Holloway recalls. “When I decided that I wanted to go back to school for social work, I was pretty clear that this was the community that I wanted to work with, and this was the issue that I wanted to work around.”

Professor Ian W. Holloway has been selected by the Society for Social Work Research as its 2017 Early Career Achievement Award winner. Photo by George Foulsham

That dedication is evident in the meningitis study as well as three other research projects that Holloway is currently shepherding:

  • A two-year study supported by a $1.89-million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense is looking at the experiences of of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender active-duty service members since the 2010 repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the law barring homosexuals from openly serving in the military.
  • A study funded by the NIH through a small research grant mechanism uses predictive technologies to understand how gay and bisexual men use geo-social networking apps and other kinds of social media to find substance use partners and sexual partners. This collaborative effort with UCLA’s departments of engineering and computer science is using predictive algorithms and social media data to try to understand how social media behavior predicts health behavior.
  • And he is involved in the development of a social networking app for HIV-positive black men in L.A. County in the 18-29 age range through a grant from California HIV/AIDS Research Program. It will be a virtual community space where these men can connect with those with similar experiences, focusing not just on health and medication adherence but on housing, job assistance, social services and/or legal needs.

Despite his prolific research output, Holloway doesn’t neglect his classroom responsibilities. If fact, he finds that his research interests often dovetail nicely with teaching opportunities.

“I teach a class on diversity, oppression and social functioning. Each year when we talk about community responses to oppression, I show the ‘Silence = Death’ banner that Act Up used as a call to action in the early days of HIV when nobody was talking about it and the entire community was being wiped out,” he explains. “Each year I show that banner from the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and each year fewer and fewer students recognize it.”

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UCLA students working as canvassers approach any men who cross into their survey area. Photo by Les Dunseith

Out on the streets of West Hollywood, student researchers such as Ryan Dougherty are learning first-hand how much knowledge exists among today’s gay and bisexual men about the serious health issues that still impact many of them.

Dougherty joined the survey team as a result of taking Holloway’s research methods class, where he learned “about the process of research, everything from the theoretical foundations of collecting data to the ethics of research. And Ian extended an opportunity for students to get involved and see what that process looks like on the ground.”

As a student in the social welfare Ph.D. program at UCLA Luskin, Dougherty may follow in Holloway’s footsteps someday, pursuing research of his own that will benefit marginalized populations and ameliorate health disparities.

“To be able to do this kind of work, and to work alongside Ian, has helped me to gain more theoretical perspectives and learn about different types of research methods,” Dougherty says. “You can spend all day in the classroom learning about research, but to actually do it and overcome the logistical barriers that come with implementing a really good research project, is a really good learning experience to have.”

At the Abbey, those logistical barriers are in full force as Dougherty attempts to stop men who cross his survey line outside the venue’s patio-style entrance. Some ignore him. A few politely wave him off. One is willing to take the survey but doesn’t qualify because he is not a resident of L.A. County.

Soon, however, a young man in a white hooded sweatshirt approaches. Dougherty catches his attention. The newcomer meets the research criteria. And he is willing to take the survey.

Nearby, Ian Holloway nods his approval. And the research interview begins.

Ryan Dougherty, a Luskin Ph.D. student, conducts a survey interview. Photo by Les Dunseith

A Day of Teaching, Ideas and Action Organized by UCLA Luskin’s Institute on Inequality and Democracy, J18 at UCLA featured activists, artists and authors addressing social justice issues related to the U.S. presidential transition

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By Stan Paul

The Institute on Inequality and Democracy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs designated Jan. 18 — two days before the inauguration of a new U.S. president — as a day of teaching, dialogue and performance at UCLA.

In the wake of the November presidential election, the event — dubbed J18 by organizers — included activists, artists and authors addressing issues of social justice related to and raised by the impending transfer of power. The public event, “From the Frontlines of Justice,” took place from 5 to 7 p.m. in UCLA’s Ackerman Grand Ballroom.

Speakers/performers included Jeff Chang, author of “We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation” and executive director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University; Patrisse Cullors, UCLA alumna and co-founder of #Black Lives Matter; Ilse Escobar, UCLA alumna, migrant and activist/organizer in Los Angeles; Erika L. Sánchez, author of the forthcoming book of poems “Lessons on Expulsion,”; Peter Sellars, professor of World Arts and Cultures and director of opera, theater and film; Bryonn Bain, artist/activist and creator of “Lyrics From Lockdown”; and Maya Jupiter, hip-hop artist, songwriter and co-founder of Artivist Entertainment.

Ananya Roy

“J18 is meant to inspire and guide our hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students and many faculty,” said Ananya Roy, director of the Institute on Inequality and Democracy and professor in the Luskin departments of Urban Planning and Social Welfare.

“We are asking educators at universities and colleges across the United States and beyond to consider organizing a program or activity on that day, be it a public event or a classroom discussion, which speaks to the many issues and themes related to this national and global moment,” Roy said.

The J18 call to action includes the stated goal of demonstrating the power of knowledge and research. Themes for the day range from economic inequality and fair housing to immigration and worker rights.

“The expertise produced and disseminated at universities and colleges on topics ranging from climate change to immigration to health care to worker rights to geopolitics serves as a vitally important counterpoint to the policy agendas of the incoming administration,” Roy said.

Roy said that J18 is made possible through active partnerships with departments and collectives at UCLA that have helped launch the initiative at UCLA and outside of the campus. They include: RAVE (Resistance Against Violence through Education), UCLA; UCLA Department of African-American Studies; UCLA Department of Chicana/o Studies; UCLA Institute of American Cultures; Justice Work Group, UCLA; UCLA Labor Center; UCLA LGBTQ Studies; and The Undercommons.

A Lifetime Dedicated to Social Welfare Five MSW alumni — ages 76 to 92 and all still working on social issues — recall their time at UCLA and how it shaped their lives

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By George Foulsham

One recalls being among the oldest students in UCLA’s School of Social Welfare. Another remembers going to school when there was still a stigma to being unmarried and pregnant. And another recalls her time studying socialwelfare at UCLA as exciting, terrifying and very rewarding.

We recently sat down for a Q&A with five social welfare alumni who attended UCLA from the 1950s to the 1970s and graduated with a master’s in social welfare. But these five scholars are all unique: Four are in their 70s and 80s, one is 92 years old, and all are continuing to work in their respective social welfare fields, long past the age when most people retire.

We discussed this lifelong dedication to their craft and other UCLA memories during interviews with these extraordinary individuals:

Jean Champommier
Photo by Roberto Gudino Jr.

Jean Champommier MSW ’64. He is 76 years old and the chief executive officer of Alma Family Services, which provides a variety of community-based services for families, including those with special needs.

Ellen Smith Graff MSW ’68. She is 80 years old and has been teaching a class for mid-career social workers and psychologists.

Rod Lackey MSW ’59. He is 79 years old and works for three home health care companies, providing counseling for clients.

Elaine Leader MSW ’70. She is 88 years old and the founder of Teen Line, a teen-to-teen confidential hotline and outreach program affiliated with Cedars-Sinai Hospital.

June Sale MSW ’69. She is 92 years old, a child-care consultant, a court-appointed special advocate (CASA) and a board member with Stone Soup Child Care and LA’s BEST, both after-school programs for children.

What are some of the things you remember about studying social welfare at UCLA?

Ellen Smith Graff: My first field placement was at the L.A. County Adoptions Department. A young woman had come in pregnant and she was not married. I had a great supervisor who helped me understand that I was with my client learning about my profession, but I was also too emotional about her situation. In the ’60s there was a stigma of unwed pregnant women and I felt her pain. I believe, though, I was able to facilitate helping her make her own choice to decide to keep her baby while losing some of her shame.

My second year was at the L.A. Children’s Hospital on Vermont Avenue. I learned the difficulty for children and their parents because of [intellectual disabilities] or other physical problems, and that they would never get better.

Both of these experiences stay with me today. They were rich and fulfilling.

Ellen Smith Graff
Photo by Roberto Gudino Jr.

Jean Champommier: The two things I remember were my field-work placements and the professors I had. My first field-work experience was at the Kennedy Child Study Center, part of St. John’s Medical Center, and working with children with developmental disabilities and their families. It was a pioneering program at the time. That experience combined with my second-year placement in a community field-based social welfare agency formed the basis for my need to develop a multicultural, multilingual holistic service approach in addressing the needs of individuals, families and communities.

Elaine Leader: Meeting people who were interested in the same thing I was interested in. But also there was a lot going on in the country around civil liberties and there were demonstrators on campus. It was very exciting.

June Sale: I remember it being exhilarating, exciting, terrifying and very rewarding. I don’t know which order — it depends on where I was when I was there. I had early childhood training and I saw what was going on and what wasn’t going on, and I was feeling very helpless, sometimes in despair. I realized it was not very effective and I wanted it to be more effective. So I applied to Social Welfare and I was admitted. I was one of the oldest students there.

Rod Lackey: It was a good experience. Of course, in those days, you didn’t have all of the cultural issues you have today. In fact, our class was primarily white. I think we had one black woman and a couple of Asian students and one Latino.

If you look at what Luskin is offering to our students now, how have things changed since you went to UCLA?

Lackey: Oh, it’s a whole new world. Now we are dealing with minority issues, gay and lesbian issues, political issues. We didn’t deal with this that much back then. I think I was the only gay student and, of course, I was closeted. You couldn’t be out. Well, you could, but you know I was very uncomfortable, but now I’m not.

Rod Lackey
Photo by Roberto Gudino Jr.

Sale: My sense is that it is far more complicated now from when I was there, with the advent of computers and all kinds of science and engineering and media communications. I think that somewhat changes the relationship people have with other people. How did we ever live without them (computers) for so long?

Graff: As I look back to the ’60s I see that I was quite naive as I entered Luskin. I grew up in the ’50s, married, and I had two small children. At that time, all mothers were to be at home and take care of children. So I ran back and forth to school and home. We were a group of students wanting to help the world: We all shared the goal to learn and get trained together. Our theses were in groups and we all worked together.

Champommier: In many ways it is a new world. We live in diverse communities which is reflected in a much more diverse student body. However, many of the issues that reverberated in the 1960s are still in contention today such as drug abuse and discrimination based on race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Scientific research has continued to advance in neurobiology and genetics including the discovery of DNA. There is greater acceptance of the importance of community mental health services, with significant increased federal, state and local funding.

In L.A. County, there is movement toward greater integration of health, mental health and substance abuse services. Luskin is providing a broader educational context in understanding all of these issues by examining public policies and approaches to deal with them.

Why does Luskin matter to you and why should it matter to those students who are considering their MSW at Luskin in the future?

Leader: I thought it was a very good program when I was there and I learned a great deal. I think it has the esteem that many other programs don’t have. I think anything associated with UCLA is very valuable.

Lackey: I think Luskin offers a lot more than just straight social welfare. You’ve got public health and all of these very important areas you need to be knowledgeable about.

Elaine Leader
Photo by Roberto Gudino Jr.

Champommier: I felt fortunate to enter the social work field in the turbulent 1960s when various institutions were being challenged, including social work itself. This is again a time of significant questioning of institutions charged with meeting the health and welfare needs of individuals, families and communities. Luskin provides a variety of career pathways to become involved in addressing these needs. It’s a wonderful opportunity for students entering the field at this exciting time.

Graff: It seems our world is more complicated now and more open with problems. In 1965 I had a wish to help people who cannot help themselves — rather naive but true. However, Luskin had structure, two or three days of experience in agencies each year, and excellent supervision each week. Luskin is a great school and I took it all in.

Sale: I think it is a pathway to really knowing how to help people. You can’t just go out and do it. You’ve got to know how to reach people. You’ve got to know yourself a little bit better too, and that is one of the real strengths of a social work program.

What motivates you to keep doing this, long after most people would have decided to retire?

Leader: I think I would be very lonely if I didn’t. I am so used to having those kinds of relationships and I would feel adrift without them.

Sale: There’s such inequality in the world and such hate and such awful stuff going on. I look at my grandchildren who are in their 40s and then I look at their children, and wonder what their lives are going to be like. I would liketo be able to think that I’m doing something that will help them, that will eventually make them helpers of the world.

Lackey: Because retirement drove me crazy. I retired from Kaiser home health four years ago. I love home health and after I retired I thought, I can’t stand this staying at home, watching TV, not shaving, this is ridiculous. So I got jobs with three different home health care agencies and I work the hours I want to. I always liked home health because every day is an adventure — different people, different backgrounds, different everything.

June Sale
Photo by Roberto Gudino Jr.

Graff: It’s something that is priceless to me. I have worked for over 40 years with many agencies as well as with a private practice. I feel richer because my graduate school was so great in preparing me for my profession — the thesis, classes, agencies and supervision.

Champommier: I didn’t know the typical retirement age was 65, for one thing. I’m 76 and as each year goes by I continue to feel engaged in making a positive difference in the lives of individuals, families and communities. I am fortunate in working together with a group of talented leaders both within the agency and in the community. We are by nature both curious and problem solvers. And each solution brings with it new problems to solve. It is a continuing learning process. I tell my staff, the moment that I lose the excitement of change that will be the time to move on.

Finally, what advice do you have for Luskin students?

Leader: Follow your dream and find something that really interests you, and follow that because that’s going to be satisfying to you and a contribution to your community.

Lackey: Try to do something besides going into private practice just to make money. That to me isn’t social work. Social work is making changes in people’s lives.

Graff: I like challenges that my clients bring to the agency: It keeps my brain working. I think new students want to gain those goals too!

Sale: I think each person has a calling that is special to them. I love working with little kids, and that’s what I do.

Champommier: You are in a unique position at Luskin to gain a broad knowledge of the social welfare field. You are indeed fortunate to be provided with the opportunity to examine social welfare issues from various perspectives and analyze the intricate nuances of situations you will contend with in your professional career. Take full advantage of what Luskin has to offer by academically challenging yourself with a spirit of openness and curiosity.