U M AKE A DIFFEREN C E Helping U Help the Community And the Winners Are ... Members of the community voted, and now the results are in. Five projects will each receive a $20,000 award to advance collaboration between UCLA faculty and community partners that aim to improve the health and the quality of life for residents of Los Angeles and beyond. The Helping U Help the Community competition was sponsored by UCLA Health and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. A panel of judges identified the first round of finalists, and the final selection was made by voters from throughout the community. The award-winning projects are: Youth Opportunities for Life Options (YOLO) YOLO is a comprehensive intervention targeting obesity among inner-city youth. It brings youth, families, schools, academic institutions and community partners together to address the epidemic at the individual level, while advocating for healthier environments. LAW Summer Urban Health Fellowship Community Partners in Care (CPIC) This health-professional pipeline program engages family medicine residents and medical, college and high school students to work to improve health and well-being through community-based research, health fairs, shadowing physicians and forming long-term mentorship relationships. CPIC has demonstrated that partnered depression care across health and community agencies improves the mental-health quality of life for its clients and reduces the risk factors for homelessness and behavioral- health hospitalizations. UCLA Breathmobile UCLA TIES for Families The mission of UCLA TIES for Families is to reduce barriers to successful adoption of children in foster care who have special needs. UCLA TIES provides pre-placement education and state-of-the-art multidisciplinary services and support for these children and their resource parents. The Breathmobile is a specialty-based asthma clinic “on wheels” serving public schools in high-risk, urban communities where barriers to specialty asthma care exist. Missed school days and missed work days due to asthma are minimized by treating children at the school site. To learn more about the winners and the competition, go to: changemakers.com/ucla Vital Signs Spring 2015 Vol. 66 3