Global and Community Health Wellbeing Awards
Global and Community Health
The UCSC Division of Social Sciences Global and Community Health (GCH) Wellbeing Awards program enables undergraduate and graduate students to complete a research project that addresses Global and Community Health in collaboration with a community organization. The program is offered through the Institute for Social Transformation, who supports and facilitates the wellbeing awards.
Global and Community Health constitutes an urgent area of research, study, and practice. Our interdisciplinary program prioritizes the improvement of health and well-being in communities worldwide. Building upon collaborations across departments, divisions and the community here in Santa Cruz, we seek to address forces affecting health outcomes that range from the molecular, ecological and genomic to the global, political and economic. Ultimately our goal is to support the sustainability of communities and climates for health both locally and globally, doing so in ways that cultivate a new generation of global and community health leaders.
Read Think Local, Go Global to learn more >>
Please direct questions to Nancy Chen nchen@ucsc.edu or the Institute for Social Transformation at transform@ucsc.edu.
Award Application
Deadline is October 30, 2020
Up to 10 awards of up to $1,000 each will be awarded.
Application 2020-2021
Evaluation Criteria:
Student applicants should 1) describe a specific research project related to Global and Community Health in collaboration with a community organization, 2) outline a budget, and 3) develop a realistic time frame for completion that includes 4-6 weeks for IRB approval*. A strong proposal will include a clear description of the project’s objective, anticipated outcomes, and how the work is to be carried out. Applicants will need to provide the name and email address of the community organization partner who has agreed to support the research project. Examination of the applicant’s research interests, relevant background skills, experience, goals and their alignment with the UCSC Division of Social Sciences mission will all be determinants of award evaluation.
*If your proposal is awarded, applicants may need to apply for IRB approval/exemption and fill out a waiver of liability. The IRB process should begin as soon as possible for funded projects.
The following items are required for consideration for a GCH Wellbeing Awards.
- A complete and on-time online application submitted by 11:59 pm US Pacific time on October 30, 2020.
- A budget narrative to briefly explain expected expenses.
- A brief email of recommendation from a faculty member to be uploaded to the application.
- A brief email of sponsorship by a community organization supervisor or internship mentor to be uploaded to the application.
All awarded projects must complete the following:
- A final project report with at least 5 photos, due on or before April 30, 2021, by email.
- Fulfillment of public or virtual presentation of findings may be in the form of a poster session or a public panel during spring 2021. Awardees are required to apply to present in the form of a poster or panel presentation for UC Global Health Day or a public panel comprised of GCH Wellbeing Fellows during May 2021.
Eligibility
Funding is offered to highly motivated undergraduate and graduate students currently enrolled through Spring 2021 and in good standing at UC Santa Cruz. Funded students must participate in a public or virtual event highlighting their work. We encourage all students at UCSC to apply, but undergraduates in the Social Sciences will be prioritized. During COVID-19 restrictions all research projects will need to be conducted in a manner that is safe and consistent with current guidelines.
Award
Student awards are limited to a maximum of $1,000 for community-based research during the academic year 2020-21. If students are applying for a group project, the award will be shared amongst the group members. The award is paid as a fellowship to help cover expenses such as: mileage, food, research supplies, data collection, equipment, software, hardware, survey incentives, etc.
Student payments will be processed by the institute and disbursed as a fellowship/scholarship to the student’s financial aid account. The award will be incorporated into the student’s financial aid offer and the amount received as a payment/refund will depend on each student’s specific financial situation, including any unpaid university fees and other awards or aid they may have. If students have questions about this they can contact the Financial Aid and Scholarships Office or click here for frequently asked questions about fellowship/scholarship payments.
Information Workshop
An information session will be offered on Wednesday, October 14, 12-1 PM. Click here to register >>
2020-2021 Award Recipients

Jonathan Chavez
Anthropology and Psychology Major
Project: Watsonville Youth

Rachel Edelman
Sociology Major
Project: Digital Media and Community Engagement

Nona Golan
Anthropology Major
Project: Personal Visibility and Access to Health Care in the Time of COVID19: the Israeli Arab People of Jisr az-Zarqa

Tashina Vavuris
Environmental Studies Department
Project: Centering Youth Voices to Promote Environmental Justice and Community Health
2019-2020 Award Recipients

Aviv Elor, Ph.D. Student, Department of Computational Media
“Towards Immersive Media for Emotionally Intelligent Virtual Reality Healthcare Experiences”
Immersive Virtual Reality games are powerful mediums to help stimulate task-based rehabilitation towards more accessible, affordable, and accurate experiences. Subsequently, emotion and self-perception are crucial elements of mental health but are not often explored or monitored in the modern healthcare context. How could a virtual world be personalized if we understand how users feel as they undergo rehabilitation? To this end, this project aims at exploring multimodal stimulation and sensing to help motivate and adapt to the difficulty of therapeutic tasks based on each individual’s emotional state. Click here for more information on this project.
Published review article in Frontiers in Virtual Reality Nov. 12, 2020 Ultimate Display for Physical Rehabilitation: A Bridging Review on Immersive Virtual Reality

Ana Flecha, Graduate Student, Latin American and Latinx Studies Department
“Women, Plant Medicines, Embodiment Practices and Group Therapeutic Processes: A Study of a California Psychedelic Initiation Program for Women”
Women have always had intimate relationships with psychedelic plant medicines, though their perspectives on them have been largely marginalized. In this study, by inquiring into the experiences of women who participated in a year-long initiation program involving plant medicines, embodiment practices such as dance and yoga, and group therapeutic processes, I found that these women reported improved mental and spiritual health in which the embodiment work and the collective experience not only of group therapeutic work, but of being and working together over time, were important parts of their healing. Although there is a wide spectrum of ways to work with psychedelics and many of them are effective sources of healing, this study shows that combining use of psychedelic plant medicines with embodiment practices and group therapeutic processes in a homo-social, collective environment was an effective approach to mental and spiritual healing for women who participated in this program.

Michelaina Johnson, Graduate Student, Environmental Studies Department
“Addressing Contaminated Water at a High School in the Pajaro Valley, CA”
I am working with the Community Water Center (CWC), an environmental advocacy nonprofit, to help purchase water bottles for the students of a high school in the Pajaro Valley, California and generate educational materials around proper techniques for water bottle sanitation. The cancer-causing chemical chromium-6 was detected in the high school’s drinking water, raising alarms for the students, their families, school staff, and regional organizations, who are working in unison to find a long-term, clean water source. As a short-term intervention, CWC helped to ensure that the high school receive deliveries of water bottle jugs to replace the contaminated well water supply. This project contributes specifically to CWC’s efforts by conducting a literature review of studies on the most effective water bottle sanitation practices; providing the findings to CWC and to the high school’s community for reference; and supplying funds to purchase water bottles.

Sona Kaur, Graduate Student, Psychology Department
“The Romanticization of Abuse and Unhealthy Relationship Dynamics”
Behaviors that occur during romantic courtship have been implicated in various forms of intimate partner violence (IPV) against women, suggesting a fine line between romance and IPV. This focus group study explored the phenomenon of romanticized abuse to examine under which contexts various forms of psychological/emotional abuse and unhealthy relationship dynamics are more likely to be perceived as normal, desirable, and romantic by heterosexual women. Preliminary analyses suggest that when presented with hypothetical abusive scenarios that are romanticized, participants identified the situation as abusive and unhealthy while simultaneously finding it romantic or normal. Additionally, specific contextual factors shaped perceptions of abuse differently. For instance, a man who persistently pursued a female love interest was perceived more positively than a woman pursuing a male love interest. These findings will be used to inform prevention efforts around relationship abuse.

Aysha Peterson, Graduate Student, Environmental Studies Department
“Linking economic and environmental justice in California’s Salinas Valley”
Rural communities in the Salinas Valley have struggled for decades to access clean water amidst extensive fertilizer runoff and nitrate contamination of groundwater supplies. While environmental justice activists fight for clean water access in rural residential areas, my study focuses on the ways that this environmental justice work intersects with struggles for economic mobility within the agricultural industry. Many of the communities affected by nitrate contamination of drinking water are comprised of agricultural workers who have begun to develop farming enterprises of their own. This year, I have begun conducting ethnographic research to explore how struggles for clean drinking water might be understood through resident first-generation farmers’ on-farm practices. Findings provoke questions about what it means to live in a polluted world and what types of interventions can or should be recognized for their contributions to environmental justice.

Lucia Vitale, Graduate Student, Politics Department
“Canary in a Coal Mine: Medication Rationing and Fragmented Health Systems in the Dominican Republic”
Taking less medication than prescribed by one’s doctor, or medication rationing, can serve as a “canary in a coal mine”, signaling the poor condition of health systems. Building on 3 years of ethnographic work along the Dominican-Haitian border, GCH funding allowed me to conduct surveys with US-based primary care medical mission Waves of Health and local partners. Quantitative results showed that patients who ranked below average on a household amenities index were more likely to report medication rationing than those who ranked above average, indicating that patients ration because they are unable to purchase the proper dosage of their medications. Further survey work, informal interviews and participant observation showed that patients not only rationed because they could not afford their medications, but also because they shared medication with community members, what Huber & Stephens (2012) call an indicator of strong kinship ties. Click here for more information on this project.

Manya Balachander, Undergraduate Student, Psychology and Community Studies Department
“Assessing Homeless Women’s Access to General and Reproductive Health Care Services in Santa Cruz County”
This project was inspired by the lack of narrative-informed research on homeless women’s health. We aimed to better understand the way in which this marginalized population interacts with our health systems and what barriers existed that prevented the utilization, and effectiveness of care. Through the analysis of semi-structured interviews with several homeless women, we were able to categorize findings into four distinct, overarching themes: 1) interaction with healthcare systems, 2) interaction with healthcare personnel, 3) navigation of healthcare and food systems, and 4) resilience. We compounded these themes into a framework we coined burden of navigation. We define the burden of navigation as the systemic, structural, and individual challenges in accessing and utilizing a wide variety of healthcare services. Our findings made clear that there isn’t necessarily a lack of healthcare services for homeless women, but rather a lack of ability in navigating those services.

Efren Lopez, Undergraduate Student, Politics Department
“Growing Justice: Mapping the Cultural Foodshed to Feed our Neighborhoods”
Consisting of 14 Latinx youth from farmworker families of a cohort named “Growing Justice” with support Global and Community Health Wellbeing Fellowship and the Community Agroecology Network (CAN), Growing Justice will create an audio map of Pajaro Valley’s (PV) cultural “foodshed,” to generate a community-based, culturally relevant and health food-sharing network among farmworker families, urban youth, small-scale farmers and culinary professionals. The preparation for the work has been happening weekly at a community garden where the youth have engaged as the caretakers. Since shelter-at-home orders were given, workshop activities have shifted online. Work will continue into the summer as the season cycle progresses. We still visit the garden to plant and grow, except that the caretaking is decentralized. Global community dialogues with coffee growers from Mexico and Nicaragua were planned in-person but now will happen online as well. Click here for more information on this project.

Aarushi Saharan, Undergraduate Student, Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology Department
“Assessing Homeless Women’s Access to General and Reproductive Health Care Services in Santa Cruz County”
This project was inspired by the lack of narrative-informed research on homeless women’s health. We aimed to better understand the way in which this marginalized population interacts with our health systems and what barriers existed that prevented the utilization, and effectiveness of care. Through the analysis of semi-structured interviews with several homeless women, we were able to categorize findings into four distinct, overarching themes: 1) interaction with healthcare systems, 2) interaction with healthcare personnel, 3) navigation of healthcare and food systems, and 4) resilience. We compounded these themes into a framework we coined burden of navigation. We define the burden of navigation as the systemic, structural, and individual challenges in accessing and utilizing a wide variety of healthcare services. Our findings made clear that there isn’t necessarily a lack of healthcare services for homeless women, but rather a lack of ability in navigating those services.