Latoya Small

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Latoya Small’s scholarship is informed by her work in clinical social work practice and community-based research.

Her research focuses on health disparities, specifically, the intersection of mental health, treatment adherence, and HIV among women and children in the U.S. and Sub-Saharan Africa. Her global research addresses the urgent need for theory-driven, empirically-informed, and sustainable psychosocial HIV treatment approaches for youth living with perinatally acquired HIV in South Africa.

In the U.S., Dr. Small examines how poverty-related stress, parenting, and mental health interact and relatedly impact adherence in HIV medical services among Black and Latina women in urban communities. An extension of her work includes mental health and discrimination facing transgender women of color.

Dr. Small takes a collaborative approach in her scholarship, recognizing that traditional intra-disciplinary boundaries can impede the development of effective and sustainable research interventions. Her work aims to produce accessible, evidence-informed interventions that bolster youth development and women’s health.

Hector Palencia

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Mr. Palencia graduated with a B.A. in English and a Religious Studies minor from the University of California, Irvine. From there he was granted an M.A. in Systematic Theology (with honors) from Berkley’s Graduate Theological Union, with another Masters degree in Social Welfare from U.C.L.A.

Mr. Palencia put his graduate studies to work in the practicum of gang resistance diversion programs, Mr. Palencia has numerous professional qualifications in addition he has presented on Social Welfare and Gangs, Criminalization of Homelessness, Working with Trauma in Youth, and Gang Round Table Discussions.

Mr. Palencia’s work history demonstrates a compassion borne out of his spiritual endeavors and a capacity for working with marginalized young offenders. He comes to UCLA from El Rancho unified where he served as one of the mental health liaison’s responsible for district wide mental health services which included coordinating services with partnering agencies as well as responding to crisis and working specifically with tier three students. For 4 years, he was with the East Whittier City School District overseeing middle school diversion programs, created partnerships with community agencies to meet needs not being addressed for students, and he became successful in writing numerous grants including the Safe Schools/Healthy Students grant initiative. In his career, he has worked in hospice and as drug and alcohol counselor handling at-risk youth case loads.

 

 

Leyla Karimli

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Dr. Leyla Karimli’s interdisciplinary applied research critically investigates the impact of poverty reduction interventions on the psychosocial well-being of vulnerable children and families in Sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia. Her work underscores the often-overlooked role of local social structures and illuminates the multidimensional nature of poverty. Through rigorous multilevel, longitudinal experimental and quasi-experimental studies, Dr. Karimli examines how economic interventions—such as ultra-poor graduation programs, asset-building initiatives, and livelihood supports—can lead to improved outcomes for women, children, and adolescents.

A central theme in her research is that poverty is not solely a matter of income, but a complex condition shaped by family dynamics, social norms, and psychosocial vulnerability. Her work reveals that sustainable improvements in child and family well-being require addressing not only economic hardship but also the relational, educational, and health-related dimensions of deprivation. Her integrated, multi-dimensional approach to poverty alleviation offers critical insights for the design of more effective programs and policies aimed at improving child and family wellbeing in resource-constrained settings.

Dr. Karimli received her PhD from Columbia University’s School of Social Work with a concentration in social policy and social welfare. She completed her postdoctoral training at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration and New York University’s Silver School of Social Work’s McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research. Prior to her academic career, Dr. Karimli actively contributed to community-based empowerment and poverty reduction initiatives by working within development agencies in the former Soviet Union and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Dr. Karimli is a faculty affiliate at Luskin’s Global Public Affairs, the Global Lab for Research in Action, the International Center on Child Health and Asset Development (ICHAD), and UCLA’s California Center for Population Research (CCPR).

 Connect with her on X (formerly Twitter)

For full list of publications please visit her page at ResearchGate or Google Scholar

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Karimli, L., Ismayilova, L., & Wells, C.R. (2025) Pathways from poverty to child mental health in Burkina Faso: Longitudinal mediation analyses in a cluster-randomized clinical trial. Journal of Adolescent Health, 76 (3), 415-428

Karimli L., Nabayinda, J., Nartey, P.B., & Ssewamala F.M. (2024) Poverty reduction and family functioning: Results from an experimental study in Sub-Saharan Africa. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 33, 3104-3118 

Karimli L., Nabunya, P., Ssewamala, F.M., & Dvalishvili, D. (2024) Combining asset accumulation and multi-family group intervention to improve mental health for adolescent girls: A cluster-randomized trial in Uganda. Journal of Adolescent Health, 74(1), 78-88

Karimli, L., Ssewamala, F. M., & Neilands, T.B. (2023) The impact of poverty-reduction intervention on child mental health mediated by family relations: Findings from a cluster-randomized trial in Uganda. Social Science & Medicine, 332, 116102

Karimli, L., Lecoutere, E., Wells, C. R. & Ismayilova, L. (2021) More assets, more decision-making power? Mediation model in a cluster-randomized controlled trial evaluating the effect of the graduation program on women’s empowerment in Burkina Faso. World Development, 137, 105159

Karimli, L., Bose, B., & Kagotho, N. (2020) Integrated graduation program and its effect on women and household economic well-being: Findings from a randomized controlled trial in Burkina Faso. Journal of Development Studies, 56(7), 1277-1294

Ismayilova, L. & Karimli, L. (2020) Harsh parenting and violence against children: a trial with ultra-poor families in Francophone West Africa. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 49(1), 18-35

Karimli, L., Shephard, D.D., McKay M. M., Batista, T., & Allmang, S. (2020) Effect of non-formal experiential education on personal agency of adolescent girls in Tajikistan: findings from a randomized experimental study. Global Social Welfare. 7(2), 141-154

Salecker, L.M., Ahmadov, A., & Karimli, L. (2020) Contrasting monetary and multidimensional poverty measures in a low-income Sub-Saharan African country. Social Indicators Research, 151(2), 547-574

Karimli, L., Ssewamala, F. M.., Neilands, T.B., Wells, C. R., & Bermudez, L. (2019) Poverty, economic strengthening, and mental health among AIDS orphaned children in Uganda: mediation model in a randomized clinical trial. Social Science & Medicine, 228, 17-24

Karimli L., Rost L., Ismayilova L. (2018). Integrating economic strengthening and family coaching to reduce work-related health hazards among children of poor households: Burkina Faso. Journal of Adolescent Health, Special Issue, Global Perspectives on Economic Strengthening, 62(1):S6–S14.

Karimli, L., Samman, E., Rost, L., & Kidder, T. (2016) Factors and Norms Influencing Unpaid Care Work: Household survey evidence from five rural communities in Colombia, Ethiopia, The Philippines, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Oxford, UK: Oxfam, Women’s Economic Empowerment and Care.

Ananya Roy

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Ananya Roy is Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare, and Geography and The Meyer and Renee Luskin Chair in Inequality and Democracy at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the founding Director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA, which advances research and scholarship concerned with displacement and dispossession in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the world. Working in alliance with social movements and community organizations, the Institute seeks to build power and abolish structures of inequality. Previously she was on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received her Master’s in City Planning (1994) and Ph.D. in Urban Planning (1999). There she was the recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award, the highest teaching recognition that the University of California, Berkeley bestows on its faculty.  In 2011, Ananya received the Excellence in Achievement award of the Cal Alumni Association, a lifetime achievement award which recognizes her contributions to the University of California and public sphere.

Ananya is a scholar of global racial capitalism and postcolonial development whose research is concerned with the political economy and politics of dispossession and displacement. With theoretical commitments to postcolonial studies, Black studies, and feminist theory, she seeks to shift conceptual frameworks and methodologies in urban studies to take account of the colonial-racial logics that structure space and place. As a researcher, Ananya strives to advance research justice, by which she means accountability to communities directly impacted by state-organized violence. At the very heart of her work is an insistence on the transformation of the public university – through teaching, public scholarship, and community engagement – so that it can be a force for social justice.

Ananya’s books have focused on urban transformations and land grabs in the global South as well as on global structures of finance and development capital. They include City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty; Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, South, Asia, and Latin America; Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global; Territories of Poverty: Rethinking North and South; and Encountering Poverty: Thinking and Acting in an Unequal World. Ananya is the recipient of several awards including the Paul Davidoff book award, which recognizes scholarship that advances social justice, for Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development.

Ananya’s most recent book is Beyond Sanctuary: The Humanism of a World in Motion, which builds on a Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar on Sanctuary Spaces: Reworlding Humanism. Thinking across Europe and the United States, this work is concerned with the place of racial others in the liberal democracies of the West. At a time of resurgent white nationalism, Beyond Sanctuary foregrounds migrant movements and their imaginations and practices of abolition and decolonization.

Housing justice has been at the center of Ananya’s work for many years now. She led a National Science Foundation Research Coordination Network on Housing Justice in Unequal Cities, which created a global field of inquiry into housing justice shared by university and movement scholars. Her ongoing scholarship, organized in the form of insurgent research collectives, is concerned with the liberal governance of mass homelessness and has been supported by research foundations such as the Russell Sage Foundation. From Echo Park Lake to Aetna Street, such work centers encampment geographies and poor people’s histories. Ananya is currently working on a monograph on racial banishment, the expulsion and social death of working-class communities of color through racialized policing and other forms of dispossession.

Ananya was Editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research from 2016 to 2020. She is a 2020 Freedom Scholar, an award bestowed by the Marguerite Casey Foundation and Group Health Foundation to scholars who advance social and racial justice. In 2022, Ananya was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Geneva. Along with Robin D.G. Kelley, she currently leads a Mellon Foundation Higher Learning endeavor titled Housing the Third Reconstruction.

Website: https://challengeinequality.luskin.ucla.edu/ananya-roy/

Larthia Dunham

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Larthia R. Dunham is a practicum educational consultant and has been a faculty member for over twenty one years, teaching gradu-ate level courses in macro social work. He is also affiliated with the University Consortium for Children and Families (UCCF). As part of Larthia’s community engagements, he offers cross-cultural sensitivity workshops and trainings to agencies working with diverse populations. Larthia is a co-founder of Social Workers Beyond Borders, a non-profit international organization, and is also an active member of the National, State, and Local Chapters of the Association of Black Social Workers and a past President of the Association of Black Social Workers of the greater Los Angeles chapter. Larthia’s passion for international social work has led him to develop Summer Immersion Pro-grams where he has taken students to Ethiopia, South Africa, and Ghana.

Laura Abrams

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Professor Abrams’ scholarship focuses on improving the well-being of youth and adults with histories of incarceration. Her ethnographic studies have examined youths’ experiences of criminality, risk, and institutions seeking to reshape their identities. These themes are considered in her first book Compassionate Confinement: A Year in the Life of Unit C (Rutgers University Press, 2013). Her second book Everyday Desistance: The Transition to Adulthood Among Formerly Incarcerated Youth (Rutgers University Press, 2017), examines how formerly incarcerated young men and women navigate reentry and the transition to adulthood in the context of urban Los Angeles. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and is the editor of two edited volumes: The Voluntary Sector in Prisons (Palgrave, 2016); and The International Handbook of Youth Imprisonment (Palgrave, 2021). She also partnered with Professor Laura Wray-Lake to produce a recent SCRD monograph entitled Pathways to Civic Engagement Among Urban Youth of Color.

 

Dr. Abrams is currently involved in several studies concerning the youth and adult criminal legal systems and reentry, locally and globally. Her study of youth justice models in four countries examined how issues of age, maturity, and culpability are constructed in law and practice. A mixed methods study of very young offenders, incarceration, health, and public policy led to a state bill in California barring juvenile justice jurisdiction in for youth under age 12; a model that is spreading nationally. Dr. Abrams is currently fielding a study on reentry, health, and social networks among young people aged 18-25 from Los Angeles County jails and along with PI Dr. Elizabeth Barnert, is the co-director of the UCLA Life Course Intervention Research Network – Youth Justice Node. She is also working with a national team to examine life after “juvenile life without parole” in the United States.

 

In the community, Dr. Abrams has served as an expert witness for death row appeals and in cases involving minors fighting their fitness to be tried as adults. She has provided public and congressional testimony regarding treatment in the juvenile justice system, the reentry needs of youth, and effective practices for the reintegration of reentry youth into the community.

 

Dr. Abrams’ work and opinions have been cited in a range of news media including the Washington Post, the New York Times and NPR, among others. She has received numerous awards for her scholarship, including the SSWR best scholarly book award (2020) and the Frank R. Bruel prize for the best published article in Social Service Review (2013). In 2020 Dr. Abrams was inducted as a member of the American Academy for Social Work and Social Welfare. In 2022, she received the inaugural UCLA Public Impact award and was inducted into the UCLA Faculty Mentoring Honor Society .

 

Professor Abrams teaches the following courses: SW 211B: Human Behavior and the Social Environment II; SW 229: The Craft of Social Welfare Scholarship; SW249: Qualitative Methods; and SW 290T: Juvenile Justice Policy.

 

You can follow Dr. Abrams on Twitter or the Facebook page for the Social Welfare Chair

 

Recent News Releases and Media Interviews:

Vera Institute of Justice: Everyday Desistance

Growing Pains of Formerly Incarcerated Youth 

GPS Rules Send California Juveniles Into a Jail Cycle

Jailed Indiana Teens Reach a Crossroads

MPR News On Abuse in a Private Juvenile Facility

Seeking Justice for Juveniles

More Protections for Juvenile Offenders are Before California Legislators

Take Two: Is Jail for Juveniles Effective in Preventing Future Crime?

Juvenile Arrests Plunged Last Year, why?

Expanding rehabilitation Programs under Federal Decree- NPR

The California Report: NPR

Michelle Talley

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Michelle Talley is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker whose main area of focus is working with youth and families as it relates to Public Child Welfare. Other areas of interest are issues dealing with domestic violence, substance use, education, and attachment in youth and families.

Ms. Talley has also worked as a mental health clinician dealing with children impacted by abuse and neglect within their family nucleus. Most of the children and families worked with were also dealing with substance use/abuse, criminal issues, education, poverty, and mental health issues in which adversely impacted their family dynamics. Ms. Talley has also worked as an adoption social worker with Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. The focus was to locate families and individuals who were interested in providing a permanent home for children in the Child Welfare system.

Jorja Leap

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Jorja Leap has been a member of the Social Welfare Department faculty at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs since 1992 and serves as the Executive Director of the UCLA Social Justice Research Partnership. As a social worker/anthropologist and recognized expert in gangs, violence, and systems change, she develops, coordinates and directs real-life scholarly efforts that involve research, evaluation and policy recommendations at the local, state and national level. Dr. Leap has worked nationally as well as globally in post-war environments and settings beset by violence throughout her career, applying a multi-disciplinary, community-based approach to her research and capacity building efforts. Her current work focuses on gangs and community justice in multi-cultural settings, criminal justice and prison reform, and the dilemmas faced by individuals reentering society after incarceration, including women, a group often overlooked.

Dr. Leap has served as policy advisor on Gangs and Youth Violence for Los Angeles County, as an expert reviewer on gangs for the National Institute of Justice, and as the Clinical Director of the Watts Regional Strategy for the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office.  In addition, she has worked as the qualitative research director for the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office Gang Reduction Youth Development (GRYD) Program.  She has also been appointed to the State of California, Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC), Standing Committee on Gang Issues. Through work she has engaged at the national level, she is now the Evaluation and Research Director for the Community Based Public Safety Collective.

Alongside these efforts, she has served as an expert witness in local, state ,and federal judicial proceedings, focusing on gangs, violence, and the relationships between trauma and criminalized behaviors. Additionally, Dr. Leap has authored a series of reports on gang membership, dynamics, and desistance in death penalty sentencing and plea mitigation procedures, appeals, habeas corpus hearings, and clemency proceedings.  Dr. Leap works to educate the court in understanding the nuances of gang activity and the trauma that underlies so much of its commission.  She continues to provide commentary on numerous television, radio and newspaper stories about gangs.

Currently, Dr. Leap is the lead researcher for the White House Community Violence Intervention Collaborative. Additionally, she is engaged in a five year, longitudinal evaluation of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang reentry program in the world, integrating UCLA undergraduate and graduate students in this ground-breaking research. She is the co-founder of the UCLA Watts Leadership Institute, working closely with the community-based leaders of Watts as well as its nonprofit network to build capacity and ensure equity in the vibrant community she is honored to be part of.  Dr. Leap has authored numerous reports, chapters, and books, including Jumped In: What Gangs taught me about Violence, Drugs, Love and Redemption with all proceeds going to Homeboy Industries and Project Fatherhood: A Story of Courage and Healing in one of America’s Toughest Communities with all the proceeds going to Project Fatherhood.  Her latest book Entry Lessons: The Stories of Women Fighting for their Place, their Children and their Futures after Incarceration was published in 2022, with all proceeds going to Susan Burton and the A New Way of Life Reentry Program.    

 

Learn more about Dr. Leap’s work.

 

Downloads and other links:

Alternative Strategies to Reduce Gang Violence
Gangster Anthropologist
L.A. County Must Reform Outdated, Harmful Youth Probation Camp System
Successful Gang and Violence Prevention Strategies – Minority News
Gang Alternative Movement Gains Momentum – Discovery News
Behind the scenes with the gang strike force

 

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