The UCLA Fielding School of Public Health has multiple experts available for media inquiries related to COVID-19.
These include experts with English, Chinese (Mandarin), French, German, and Spanish fluency. They include:
Professor Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez
Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez is an associate professor of community health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and associate director of the California Center for Population Research. A primary line of Beltran-Sanchez's research focuses on estimating national-level burden of chronic, violence-related, and infectious disease mortality, and their impact on life expectancy and years of healthy life, and in understanding how early life circumstances may be related to adult health and illness. He is currently researching COVID-19-related mortality rates in the United States, Latin America, and the Republic of Korea. He is fluent in English and Spanish.
Professor Arturo Vargas Bustamante
Arturo Vargas Bustamante is an associate professor of health policy and management with the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and has extensive research experience in the United States and Mexico. His research focuses on access to and use of health care among Latinos/Hispanics and immigrants in the United States. He also specializes in the comparative analyses of health care delivery systems in Latin American countries. Along with teaching and research at UCLA, his public service includes work as the Director of Faculty Research at the Latino Politics and Policy Initiative at UCLA. He is fluent in English and Spanish.
Professor & Dean Ronald Brookmeyer
Ronald Brookmeyer is professor of biostatistics and dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, with expertise in the modeling of epidemics, simulation studies of spread of infectious diseases, estimating the incubation period of disease, the design of vaccine and therapeutic trials, and the quality and completeness of data and statistics of disease surveillance. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine of the (U.S.) National Academy of Sciences, and has served on task forces for the World Health Organization (WHO).
Professor David Eisenman
Dr. David Eisenman, is director of the Center for Public Health and Disasters and professor-in-residence of community health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Eisenman is also a professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. His work addresses community resilience, mental health in primary care, trauma, climate change, and violence prevention.
Professor Jonathan Fielding
Dr. Jonathan Fielding is currently a Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Management and of Pediatrics in the Schools of Public Health and Medicine at UCLA. Previously, he served for 16 years as Public Health Director and Health Officer for Los Angeles County. A founding member of the U.S. Clinical Preventive Services Task Force, Dr. Fielding currently chairs the U.S. Task Force on Community Preventive Services, and was appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion and Integrative and Public Health. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. He currently (March 24) serves as co-chair of the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI)’s COVID-19 Task Force, helping define the critical role buildings, organizations and communities play in prevention and preparedness, resilience and recovery.
Professor Chandra Ford
Chandra Ford is director of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health’s Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice & Health and associate professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences. Her expertise includes health equity and disparities; social inequalities, including poverty; mistrust of the healthcare system and HIV-related conspiracy beliefs, racism and racism-related factors, and vulnerable populations (e.g., LGBT). She has served on research and policy projects with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, and the American Public Health Association.
Professor Gilbert Gee
Gilbert Gee is a professor of community health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. A primary line of Gee's research focuses on conceptualizing and measuring racial discrimination, and in understanding how discrimination may be related to illness. His work on health surveys and disease exposure has been recognized by the (U.S.) National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Professor Jody Heymann
Dr. Jody Heymann is founding director of the WORLD Policy Analysis Center and served as dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health from 2013-2018. She is a distinguished professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, the David M. Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She is an elected member of the U. S. National Academy of Medicine and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and has worked with the World Health Organization, the International Labor Organization, the World Economic Forum, UNICEF, and UNESCO.
Professor Richard J. Jackson
Dr. Richard Jackson is professor emeritus in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. He has served in many leadership positions, including as the head of the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) in the role of State Public Health Officer from 2004-05. He was the founder of the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, now at CalEPA, and for three years he led CDPH’s Infectious Disease Division. Early in his career, Jackson served as an officer in the Epidemic Intelligence Service at CDC, and later served for nine years as Director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health. The Center included emergency response, the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile, the environmental laboratories, and numerous other activities; he was the lead for these activities on September 11, 2001. A UCSF trained physician, pediatrician, and epidemiologist, he received the Presidential Distinguished Service award for his work at CDC. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
Professor Michael Jerrett
Michael Jerrett is a professor of environmental health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. He is an internationally recognized expert in the use of Geographic Information Science (GIS) for exposure assessment and spatial epidemiology, including air quality and the impact of disease in areas with poor air quality. He is professor and immediate past chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at UCLA FSPH, and has served on research projects and advisory committees for the (U.S.) National Academy of Science and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Professor Robert J. Kim-Farley
Dr. Robert J. Kim-Farley serves as professor-in-residence of epidemiology and community health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. His previous roles include director of the Division of Communicable Disease Control and Prevention at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, and service with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization in Indonesia, India, and Switzerland. Kim-Farley addresses public health preparedness for, and response to, deliberate use of biological agents, and reduction and eradication of communicable diseases.
Professor Randall Kuhn
Randall Kuhn is a demographer and sociologist with the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health who serves as an associate professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences and as an expert with the UCLA California Center for Population Research. His expertise includes the demography of vulnerable populations, including the aging and the homeless, global health, immigrant health, and health surveillance programs.
Professor Vickie M. Mays
Vickie M. Mays is a distinguished professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and of psychology at the UCLA College of Letters and Science. As a clinical psychologist trained in disaster and emergency response, and who spent five years helping rebuild New Orleans’ mental health capacity and workforce after Katrina, Mays' work has centered on training and community capacity to assist and respond during emergencies and in disasters. Her efforts have centered on ensuring equity, access and addressing discrimination in vulnerable population in response to disasters, and on addressing the human side of closures, isolation, social-distancing and quarantine for adherence to these directives.
Professor Karin Michels
Karin Michels is professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, and has wide experience in epidemiology, disease prevention, public health, and statistical methods. In the context of COVID-19, Professor Michels has particular expertise in international comparisons, prevention measures, and future prediction models, and is researching how the pandemic has developed in multiple countries in Europe and Asia, including Germany, Italy, and the Republic of Korea. She is fluent in English and German.
Professor Anne Rimoin
Anne Rimoin, professor of epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, is an expert in emerging infectious diseases, ebolavirus, zoonoses, immunization, and infectious disease epidemiology. Rimoin is the founder of the UCLA-DRC Health Research and Training Program in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and serves as director of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health's Center for Global and Immigrant Health. She is fluent in English and French.
Professor Zuo-Feng Zhang
Dr. Zuo-Feng Zhang is the associate dean for research and a professor of epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Zhang’s service includes his tenure as WHO Consultant for National Noncommunicable Disease Prevention and Controls in China, and as a regular member of NIH Epidemiology of Cancer Study Section. He is fluent in English and Chinese (Mandarin).
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