For the second year in a row, the H&H Lee Charitable Foundation awarded scholarships to several deserving graduate students to help support their goal of completing a graduate-level degree to be used during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Foundation president Ken Lorin said, “the H&H Lee Foundation is committed to helping students advance in their education and is honored to support the UCI Program in Public Health.”
This year’s gift is twice as much as what the Foundation made last year – eight students received a scholarship this year, compared to four awards made during the previous academic year. The focus of the award is intended for students who are conducting research around community engagement and health equity – foundational drivers of the UCI Program in Public Health.
While the campus and the Program provide some financial support for its graduates students, there is still a significant financial commitment by the student that is needed to complete a graduate degree. Scholarships such as the H&H Lee Foundation Scholarships are invaluable to our more than 200 graduate students who are trying to build a career of improving population health.
“With the H&H Lee Foundation Fellowship award, I am able to cover part of my tuition fees so I can continue my academic career despite financial hardships caused by the pandemic,” says Yuxin Huang, a scholarship recipient and second-year MPH student.
The H&H Lee Foundation is committed to helping students advance in their education and is honored to support the UCI Program in Public Health.”
Ken Lorin, Foundation President
With the funding, awardees can focus on community-based research, which was a significant reason why they were chosen. Examples of projects include analyzing dementia risk among American Indians and Alaska Natives; discovering neighborhoods with low socioeconomic status have substantially lower biodiversity levels; and reducing cardiovascular risk in Latinx communities.
“With the H&H Lee Foundation Fellowship award, I have protected research time during the summer to focus on cleaning data and conducting analysis for preliminary data that will be used in my PhD dissertation proposal,” says Dai.
MPH student Leanna Fong is dedicating her research time to improving social progress and health equity. “With the H&H Lee Foundation Fellowship award, I was able to host community outreach events and provide participatory resources in my effort to collect key research data around knowledge and awareness of Advance OC,” says Fong.
Congratulations to all awardees:
- Jiahui Dai, epidemiology doctoral candidate: Focusing her thesis on understanding the unique health risks of American Indians and Alaska Natives, specifically the effects of different anti-diabetic treatments (i.e., metformin and insulin) on the risk of all-cause dementia among this underserved population.
- Leanna Fong, MPH student: Research assistant on to increase public awareness about Advance OC and their data platforms that can help deliver health equity and improve social progress with strategic interventions in the county.
- Alexis Ruth Gaines, epidemiology doctoral candidate: Uncovering disparities among type 2 diabetes rates among Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color by evaluating genetic associations.
- Yuxin Huang, MPH student: Serves as a lab member in the Social Epidemiology and Research in Community Health (SEARCH) lab working on a project called SERVE-OC, which focuses on reducing cardiovascular risk factors within entire family units as well as understanding and intervening on structural barriers to behavioral change in Latina/o/x and Vietnamese families in Santa Ana.
- Anqi Jian, public health doctoral candidate: Examining the health impacts of short-term repeated exposure to wildfire smoke in the communities of San Joaquin Valley and Eastern Coachella Valley in Southern California.
- Lingling Li, MPH student: Conducting data analysis on a novel research project to evaluate the association among hearing loss, obesity, and subjective cognitive decline among American Indian and Alaska Native elderly communities.
- Mengyi Li, public health doctoral candidate: Taking on the analysis of biodiversity, our entire support system for humans and animals, and how communities of low socioeconomic status and high racial/ethnic minorities have substantially lower biodiversity levels.
- Reina Obeid, MPH student: Launching a community plant-based cooking workshop among UCI health patients to help encourage healthy eating habits and improve health literacy.
Our H&H Lee Foundation Fellowship awardees embody the mission and vision of UCI Public Health and are advancing evidence-based research in the community.
