Serving a community close to home – the UCI community

UC Irvine is Orange County’s second largest employer, on the heels of the Walt Disney Company, with more than 25,000 employees. And that number continues to rise as the campus and UCI Health expands their footprint throughout Orange County and neighboring counties. The diverse workforce faces unique challenges, but the common thread is that all the staff, faculty, and physicians work together to provide an exceptional education to students and world-class care to patients.

Public health has long been synonymous with large-scale interventions and population-level strategies aimed at improving the overall well-being of large sectors of a population. While these approaches remain crucial, it is also essential to recognize that public health can be precise, like improving the health and well-being of one community. In this case, that community is UC Irvine’s robust workforce.

UCI Human Resources (HR) takes charge of providing innovative strategies to support the UCI workforce, including consulting and strategic HR services, compensation and classification, talent acquisition, engagement, and wellness. This department has been a valuable partner of UCI Public Health and has hosted dozens of undergraduate and graduate students as their practicum site. One such student and alumna is Lira Islam ‘19, MPH ‘21.

Many public health students, including myself, see the real impact client-first strategies have on creating a supportive work environment.”

– Lira Islam ’19, MPH ’21

Making real impact within the UCI community

As a UCI Public Health undergraduate alumna, Lira Islam chose the UCI HR department as her practicum site for her Master of Public Health degree. HR was the perfect place to utilize her undergraduate public health degree that she received in 2019, and it didn’t hurt that she was a staff member working for UCI HR’s engagement and wellness team.

“Equipped with an MPH degree, I felt ready to tackle the challenges that lay ahead of me,” says Lira. “I feel like I can make a big impact through my role, helping to develop the many programs and resources that are offered to both campus and UCI Health staff.”

As a public health practitioner, Lira strives to increase awareness and education about the resources available to her UCI community. Whether it is in her paid role within UCI HR or serving as the past Events Chair within the UCI Public Health Alumni Association, she is dedicated to giving back to the community that has given her so much.

One of the biggest impacts Lira has made to our UCI community is overseeing the UCI Lactation Support Program to promote a family-friendly work and learning environment for breastfeeding mothers to help achieve success at work, at school, and in their personal lives. Since she began, she has helped improve nearly 20 existing lactation rooms and establish six new lactation rooms within the UCI campus where a lactation room didn’t previously exist. In addition, Lira also helps manage a newsletter to over 12,000 UCI staff and faculty, supports a mental health training course, and leads a wellness ambassador program to identify co-workers in schools, departments, and divisions across the enterprise to act as a valuable wellness resource.

Most importantly, Lira now serves as the site coordinator for UCI Public Health practicum students interested in gaining experience with UCI HR – a place she was at not that many years ago. Since 2020, UCI HR has welcomed over 30 public health students who are interested in using their public health knowledge to align with UCI HR’s mission of empowering people-success.

“It has been a joy to introduce many students to the work that UCI HR is doing around wellness and engagement,” says Lira. “Many public health students, including myself, see the real impact client-first strategies have on creating a supportive work environment.”