National Partners

UCLA was the first university to offer the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) on a college campus. Supported by HCI, DPP at UCLA now delivers the evidence-based 16-week educational program annually. The program is available to all students, faculty, and staff. This year, we also trained health educators from UC Davis and UC Riverside to conduct the program on their campuses.

Over the past four years, Semel HCI has been actively engaged with the Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA), the nonprofit organization set up by First Lady Michelle Obama as part of her “Let’s Move!” campaign in the White House. UCLA was one of the first campuses in the nation to sign the MOU to work to meet the “healthier campus” commitments over three years. PHA “ensures that commitments made are commitments kept by working with unbiased, third party verifiers to monitor and publicly report on the progress [their] partners are making to show everyone what can be achieved when we all work together.”

UCLA Housing and Hospitality, UCLA Recreation, and Associated Students UCLA (ASUCLA) have been working on our MOU commitments over the last three years. This year, we submitted our final data points for our commitments and are awaiting response from the third party verifier. Upon reflection, our representatives said that participation in PHA was worthwhile since ASUCLA and Undergraduate Dining Chefs felt it helped them stretch their goals and do more to make the food environment more healthful.

UCLA was invited to join the Menus of Change University Research Collaborative (MCURC) three years ago, and HCI continues to attend annual meetings and participate in regular conference calls. Jointly led by Stanford University and the Culinary Institute of America, MCURC is a working group of “leading scholars, foodservice business leaders, and executive chefs from invited colleges and universities who are accelerating efforts to move Americans toward healthier, more sustainable, plant-forward diets.” This year, UCLA student, faculty, and staff researchers collaborated on multiple projects across campus (see the Food Initiative section of our Progress Report for more details).

In 2016, HCI joined the national Teaching Kitchen Collaborative (TKC) as a founding member. The TKC is a network of thought leaders using teaching kitchen facilities as catalysts of enhanced personal and public health across medical, corporate, school, and community settings. In July 2016, HCI hosted the founder of the TKC, Dr. David Eisenberg, where the implementation of teaching kitchens was discussed. In September 2016, AVP Slusser and Janet Leader, Lecturer and Associate Director of Field Studies, Department of Community Health Sciences in the Fielding School of Public Health, attended the national TKC meeting at the Google campus in New York, where they saw examples of successful teaching kitchens in other organizations. In addition, they participated in the TKC Best Practices and Research working groups and were updated on current activities. Participation in these meetings and working groups was a springboard for teaching kitchen efforts on campus.