The David Geffen School of Medicine handed out awards March 14 to celebrate student and staff organizations who have demonstrated a commitment to the medical school’s mission.
The Cultural North Star recognizes people working to help transform the community, said Natalie Perry, the Cultural North Star lead at the School of Medicine. The award provides $5,000 to the recognized teams that can be used at their discretion to fund a new project or ongoing activities, she added.
“All the teams that we recognize today did an excellent job of representing our main pillars here in the School of Medicine, whether it was clinical care, education or research,” Perry said.
By reinvesting in these pillars, the school of medicine’s leadership hopes to attract more people to start new initiatives that further the medical school’s mission, Perry said. The event aimed to encourage members of the School of Medicine community to align their daily actions and interactions with the School’s mission to heal humanity.
Another goal of the award was to highlight how faculty, staff and students work together to create community, Perry said.
“One thing that we’re trying to do is break down those silos, encourage people to just rebuild community or to establish new communities,” Perry said.
The organizations that were awarded were the Grant Submission Unit, La Cosecha and the Mobile Clinic Project.
The Grant Submission Unit is an organization within the UCLA Clinical & Translational Science Institute that offer the additional administrative infrastructure support researchers require to submit grants, said Robin Faria, the director of the Grant Submission Unit.
The Grant Submission Unit provides free services to guide the complex submission process for faculty when it comes to primary government funders such as the National Institute of Health, said Kelly Lozo, the senior program manager for training grants within the Grant Submission Unit.
Lozo added that the event was an opportunity to break out of work silos and learn from other teams doing inspiring work.
Denise Jimenez and Erica Escalera co-founded La Cosecha in January 2024 to center the health needs of farmworkers and train future health care providers on their occupational health hazards, Jimenez said.
Jimenez said they have been touched by how many people want to support their cause, which was built on the desire to advocate for people like their parents who are farmworkers.
“We were talking about receiving this award – we both got very emotional because we really just go back and reflect on the work that we’ve been able to do thus far,” Jimenez said. “We couldn’t have done any of it without our board and without our La Cosecha members who really put in their soul and their heart into the work that we do.”
The Mobile Clinic Project is a student-run street medicine organization that provides health and social services to people experiencing homelessness in Hollywood around the School of Medicine, said Matthew Vu, the operations coordinator of the MCP.
Vu, a fourth-year public health student, said the opportunity to talk about the MCP served as an opportunity to advocate for clients. Vu added that the monetary award has allowed the Mobile Clinic Project to ensure that they are able to operate the clinic on a robust and comprehensive level.
Learning about the various organizations that also won the award at the event made Vu appreciate the sense of community at the medical school, he said.
Perry said she appreciated how the students and staff were integrated in the event, blurring the boundaries between who was a student and who was staff.
“That was a really lovely feeling to see how many people turned out,” Perry said. “It should get to a point where it’s like that, where students and faculty are working together so closely that you can’t untangle them.”