UCLA Public Impact Research Awards spotlight professors uplifting communities in L.A., nation

Terence Keel, one of six recipients of UCLA's 2024 Public Impact Research Awards, said his commitment to social justice and positive change remains unshakable even when progress might not come as quickly as he'd hope. That firm dedication to improving people's lives and society through research characterizes of all this year's honorees, whose projects range from protecting the incarcerated and those in police custody to free eviction defense tools for tenants and support for people with HIV and substance use issues.

The annual awards, given by the UCLA Office of Research and Creative Activities, provide a platform to celebrate the efforts of faculty translating research into positive public action that benefits local, national and global communities. An awards ceremony will be scheduled for later in the year.

"One of UCLA's highest priorities is to demonstrate to the community that our research and creative activities have a positive public impact," said Roger Wakimoto, UCLA's vice chancellor for research and creative activities. "Indeed, the Public Impact Awards are strongly aligned with both goals one and three in the UCLA strategic plan."

This year's honorees are:

Terence Keel
Professor, department of African American studies and UCLA Institute for Society andGenetics
Founder, BioCritical Studies Lab at UCLA

Shocked by the murder of George Floyd and propelled by protests against police violence in 2020, Terence Keel shifted the focus of his research from religion, history, science and culture to investigating deaths of people in police custody and during police encounters. Working with academic colleagues and community partners, Keel zeroed in on how medical examiners and coroners process deaths in custody and why their findings tend to "naturalize" state violence by describing such deaths as a result of "preexisting conditions."

Keel's research group, the BioCritical Studies Lab, which has enlisted 40 UCLA undergraduate students, analyzes laws, policies and institutions around the country, as well as autopsies of those who have died in custody to understand this process of naturalization. The group also works closely with the families of people who have died as a result of police violence.

"Those impacted are moved by the fact that my lab takes them seriously and that we are helping them see the connections between their tragedy and that of others who have been failed by our criminal justice system," Keel said.

Keel has been involved in drafting laws in California and Maryland, and is pursuing a lawsuit in Pennsylvania calling for increased public transparency and the release of records and independent investigations of deaths in custody in that state. He has also co-authored scholarly articles about deaths in Los Angeles County jails and the use of pepper spray by police.

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Nicholas Shapiro
Assistant professor, UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics
Director, Carceral Ecologies Lab

Members of the Carceral Ecologies Lab

For more than a decade, UCLA medical anthropologist Nicholas Shapiro and his Carceral Ecologies Lab have had a unique public impact health justice and equity. Rooted in universal struggles for racial and environmental justice, the group has developed tools to provide people with the highest stakes in these issues, including those in carceral facilities, with vital research findings. These tools have run the gamut from timely white papers and documentaries to lawsuits aimed at greater government transparency.

"Many of today's problems are a combination of insidious and overt," Shapiro said. "Addressing them requires technical knowledge, understanding social context, being in conversation with those most impacted, as well as a little imagination."

Shapiro's recent research has revealed potentially high levels of contamination in drinking water in U.S. prisons, and he has pushed for new standards to protect incarcerated people in California from extreme heat. In addition, he has collaborated with leading artists to reconceptualize relationships between humans and their environments and with local groups in Los Angeles focused on environmental and racial justice - tying grassroots work in the community to high-impact stewardship of public discourse, including recently federal legislation.

"It's an honor to marshal the resources of a public research university with an incredible and diverse student body towards tackling these wicked problems," said Shapiro, who is committed to recruiting formerly incarcerated and system-impacted students for the lab. "All too often, what is celebrated in academia is only the articles, books, awards and grants, but we think that the process of research is equally impactful."

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Steven Shoptaw
Professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and of family medicine
Director, UCLA Center for Behavioral and Addiction Medicine
Director, UCLA Vine Street Clinic

Psychologist Steven Shoptaw is a world expert on addiction treatment whose work has benefited communities most impacted by stimulant use and HIV. Shoptaw brings his cutting-edge research straight to the source, having built out the UCLA Vine Street clinic in Hollywood. His mission there is to leverage scientific resources to address high rates of methamphetamine use, HIV infections and overdose deaths among individuals who live in the surrounding neighborhoods and greater Los Angeles.

"The health of Angelenos who have the least affects the health of all us, especially our residents with the most," said Shoptaw, spurred to action each day by his dedication to building the public's health. Exemplifying his commitment are the nearly two decades he served as volunteer executive director for Safe House, a facility that provided permanent and emergency housing for those living with HIV/AIDS, substance use and mental health disorders from 1996 to 2013. He now uses a mobile clinic to bring integrated health and care for addiction and infectious diseases to those who are unstably housed and who face transportation issues and other barriers to care.

Shoptaw teaches using the "Case-based Learning Collaborative on Stimulants." This format, a nationally recognized forum led by his addiction medicine fellows, teaches doctors, nurses, social workers and community stakeholders best practices in evidence-based approaches such as harm reduction through formal treatment for people who use stimulants. His foundational work with contingency management for those who use cocaine or methamphetamine advises Los Angeles County stakeholders, clinicians and community based organizations on how to implement this therapy - which positively reinforces desired behaviors - to help people reach their goals regarding substance use.

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Tenant Power Toolkit

Hannah Appel
Associate professor of anthropology
Associate director, UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy

Gary Blasi
Professor emeritus of law

Ananya Roy
Professor of urban planning, social welfare and geography
Meyer and Renee Luskin Professor of Inequality and Democracy
Founding director, UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy

When millions of Americans lost wages at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, mass evictions loomed. California, and particularly Los Angeles County, with an estimated 365,000 renter households at risk, were no exception. In response, Hannah Appel, Gary Blasi, Ananya Roy and their colleagues launched an online eviction-defense application for California tenants called the Tenant Power Toolkit.

"Eviction is a systemic problem," said Appel, who noted that tenants face civil court eviction proceedings alone. "Our toolkit seeks to provide people the tools to fight their eviction while building the collective tenant power necessary to meet that of landlords and a financialized housing market."

Working with housing justice lawyers, technologists and community partners, the UCLA team coded the regulatory landscape of California's 580 jurisdictions into a program tenants can easily use on any internet-connected device, in Spanish or English, to assert their jurisdiction-specific defenses. Since the toolkit launched in July 2022, the program has prepared more than 8,000 eviction defenses, allowing approximately 21,000 tenants - over a third of them children - to avoid default eviction.

"As a professor, we are encouraged to make meaningful public impact with our research," Appel said. "But work that makes the most public impact is sometimes not recognized as research at all. This program helps resolve this contradiction, and the Tenant Power Toolkit team is so grateful for that."

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