Cultural North Star Awards

Join us in honoring our CNS Awards Recipients

Virtual Ceremony

Monday, December 9, 2024 | 12 to 1 pm 

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In-Person Celebration  

Friday, March 14, 2025 | 12 to 2 pm

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Improving Access Counseling and Treatment for Californians with Prostate Cancer (IMPACT)

IMPACT is a partnership between UCLA Urology and the California Department of Health Care and is the largest prostate cancer treatment program of its kind. IMPACT partners with community providers and local health departments to provide prostate cancer treatment to California men who have little or no health insurance. The program was created in 2001 by Dr. Mark Litwin and is daily administered by an amazing team of individuals who at all times put the men they serve as a priority. The goal of this program is to empower men to become active participants in their health care. This involves incorporating teaching and skill-building in our interactions and helping their voice be heard. 

Founding Members:  Mark Litwin, Laura Baybridge, Sally Maliski, Barbara Clerkin, James Orecklin

Staff Members: William Aronson, Kristen Williams, Ericka Maldonado-Aviles, Yamilex Velgara, Molyka Seang, Priscilla Valencia, Jaqueline Gorodetsky

CORELAB

The CORELAB at the Division of Cardiac Surgery at UCLA was established in 2012. This team is a volunteer group of undergraduate students, medical students, residents, fellows, and attendings, who come together with the goal of advancing academic medicine. The CORELAB is dedicated to defining clinical outcomes and improving processes of care in cardiovascular surgery. In doing so, they aim to also train the next generation of clinician-scientists who can then disseminate our mission of groundbreaking research around the world. This team takes their responsibility very seriously: at its core, it is driven not just to advance science and medicine, but to make healthcare more equitable and the world a better place.

Student Members:  Sara Sakowitz, Nguyen Le, Amulya Vadlakonda, Shayan Ebrahimian, Nam Yong Cho, Troy Coaston, Joanna Curry, Shineui Kim, Kole Joachim, Shannon Nesbitt, Giselle Porter, Konmal Ali, Jeff Baliyan

Faculty Members: Peyman Benharash, Yas Sanaiha, Joseph Hadaya, Nikhil Chervu, Saad Mallick

Body Empowerment Project (BEP)

Body Empowerment Project works to prevent eating disorders in adolescents, specifically in populations that lack access to treatment, representation, and preventive care. At UCLA, the aim of this student organization is to reduce eating disorder risk and empower adolescents/young adults to find body acceptance and self-worth by delivering a research-validated body-positive and social justice-oriented curriculum through an innovative near-peer mentorship panel. The primary goal of the organization is to reduce healthcare disparities and promote equitable access to a novel community health intervention.

Student Members: Hannah Lee, Matthew Yan, Christina Miranda - Second Year Stanford Medical Student, Body Image Task Force - UCLA Undergraduate Student Organization (BEP Collaborator and Partner) 
 

Faculty Members: Jason Bahk, Rebecca Dudovitz, Elaine Rosen,  Hope W. Levin, Deborah Lehman, Tracy Wallace, Theresa Thibodeaux

DCI Student Group

The mission of DCI is to foster a community of individuals with disabilities and/or chronic illnesses, as well as their allies, to promote justice, diversity, and inclusion. DCI is focused on five primary goals to enhance advocacy and accessibility: 1) Community for trainees and faculty with disability and chronic illness 2) Accessibility of resources and campus 3) EDI and representation 4) Admissions and curriculum inclusion 5) Quality and inclusive patient care.

Student members: Leane Nasrallah, Zina Jawadi, Lauren Taiclet, Sam Hulbert, Alex Keir, Kasey Fitzsimmons, Charlotte Poplawski, Tiffany Fan

Faculty member: Alice Kuo

UCLA Care Coordination Team

The UCLA Gender Health Program strives to offer comprehensive medical and surgical care to the transgender and gender-diverse community in Los Angeles and across the country. The program understands that each individual seeking support is following their unique journey and that the only way to provide person-centered healthcare is to treat each patient with sensitivity, provide a comfortable and safe healthcare experience, continue to expand our understanding of how to effectively serve the gender-diverse population, deliver leading-edge research findings and incorporate programs in a network of resources to keep our patients safe and healthy.

Staff members: Kristen Williams, Ethan Patron, Ellisone Punzalan, and Chris Mann (Founding Program Manager)

UCLA Prevention Center of Excellence

Created in 2018, the UCLA Prevention Center of Excellence provides workforce development through evidence-based training, consultation, and coaching, designed to improve community mental health and well-being. It harnesses extensive expertise from the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, as well as other campus-wide partnerships.

Post-doc members: Alissa der Sarkissian, Karolina Grotkowski, Brianna Hobson, Sierra Kuzava

Staff members: Gabriela (Gabi) Alejos, Ana Amador, Natalie Arbid, Claudia Avalos-Garcia, Alyssa Ayon, Wendy Barrera, De'Nisha Beasley, Agustina Bertone, Jae Canas, Susan (Suzi) Cantwell, Marleen Castaneda, Helen Chen, Allison Clement Lichtman, Susan Cohen, Megan Cox, Sophie de Figueiredo, Jolie Delja, Miguel Drayton, Kazandra (Casey) Estorque, Susan Finley, Daisy Gomez, Nicole Gonzalez, Clarissa (Clare) Gorospe, Tommy Hsiao, Ashley Johnson, Dave Ju, Yoon Jung, Rachel Linonis, Catherine Lippincott, Victoria Lloyd, Joshua Manlutac, Lauren Marlotte, Ruben Martinez, Laura McMullin, Rebecca (Becca) Morgan, Juan Muniz, Bianca Noone, Elizabeth (Liz) Ollen, Danielle O'Terry, Blair Paley, Alejandra Plasencia, David Plasencia, Gustavo Rico, Shanna Rosenberg, Josue Ruiz, Jaspreet (Jessie) Saini, Tiffany Santana, Arsineh Sarkisian, Alan Semaan, Maegan Sinclair, Valerie Sommer, Paola Tiburcio, Patrick Tiongson, Eugenia Tsao, Binh Vuong, Evelyn Wang, John Weathersby, Valerie Yarema

Faculty members: Hilary Aralis, Eraka Bath, Roya Ijadi-Maghsoodi, Jessica Jeffrey, Sheryl Kataoka, Audra Langley, Sung-Jae Lee, Patricia Lester, Norweeta Milburn, Catherine Mogil, Blanca Orellana, Natalie Ramos


2020

Carol M. Mangione MD, MSPH

The winner of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA's 2020 Cultural North Star Award is Carol Mangione, MD, MSPH, FACP, Division Chief of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research and Professor of Medicine and Public Health.


2019

CNS Award

Dr. Ahmed has been part of the Simms/Mann team since 2002, during which time she has played a critical role in establishing evidence-based psychosocial assessment and treatment protocols, as well as scaling the Center’s services to meet the growing needs of our community. As the Center’s training director, Dr. Ahmed has developed and implemented a nationally recognized multidisciplinary psycho-oncology training program, in addition to supervising the teaching/training of more than 100 pre- and post-doctoral clinical psychology students, MSW oncology students and chaplaincy interns. Dr. Ahmed received her BA from Brown University and her doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Denver. She completed her clinical internship and postdoctoral training at the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA. 

Nearly a dozen of Dr. Ahmed’s colleagues and mentees submitted testimonials on her behalf, sharing countless stories of their “loving and brave” leader’s compassion, creative problem solving and mission-driven commitment to do what’s right, make things better and be kind. From expanding psychosocial care to address access disparities to piloting data-driven psychoeducational workshops for research staff, Dr. Ahmed has not only exemplified our Cultural North Star values in her own work, but she has also inspired and empowered those around her to do the same.