The L.A. Trust expands team to meet its missions

New additions to The L.A. Trust team will enable us to expand research, best practices and services affecting hundreds of thousands of students and their families. 

The Los Angeles Trust for Children’s Health is expanding its team to meet new challenges and fulfill new grants.  

Alex Zepeda has joined The L.A. Trust as a full-time senior data and research analyst. Zepeda will oversee The L.A. Trust Data xChange, a multimillion-dollar initiative that links student health metrics with academic and attendance data to identify concerns and find solutions. She will also support other research projects, programs funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), and the Operations Committee of The L.A. Trust board of directors.   

The Pasadena resident has served as a research analyst at Child360 and worked at the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities. Zepeda has a bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley and master’s in public health from UCLA.  

“We are excited to have Alex on board,” said Marsha Ellis, director of programs for The L.A. Trust. “The L.A. Trust believes in data-driven solutions and Alex is the perfect person to help us find them.”  

More development  

Summer intern Erick Escalante, health connections intern, will promote The L.A. Trust’s school-based health census; align policy and legislative work to support LAUSD Wellness Centers; collect, organize and communicate SBIRT data; and help prepare reports on the overall Wellness Initiative.   

Julie Edens has joined The L.A. Trust as a fundraising and events consultant reporting to Development and Communications Director Anna Baum. Edens will work part-time managing fundraising events, including the upcoming Salute to Student Health event and individual giving campaigns.   

Also reporting to Baum is Hailey Jures, who will continue to serve The L.A. Trust as   development consultant and grant writer. Jures is completing her master’s degree in public affairs at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.  

University of San Francisco undergraduate Erin Brown, who joined The L.A. Trust as an intern in March, will become a part-time communications assistant in August, reporting to Rob Wray, associate director of communications and media.  

“Hailey has been an important part of our team for years,” Baum said. “I have worked closely with Julie Edens at the CLARE Foundation and seen her skills in action. And in just a few short months, Erin has proven herself in a key communications function,” Baum said. “Together, they will help The L.A. Trust raise its profile in the community and raise the funds we need to accomplish our missions.”  

New tool will help integrate schools and health centers

Dr. Kenny Ferenchak presented “School-Based Health Integration with Schools” at The L.A. Trust’s Learning Collaborative December 2. 

A new tool to measure the integration of school-based health centers with their schools was presented at The L.A. Trust’s Wellness Network Learning Collaborative December 2. More than 50 representatives from Los Angeles Unified, Wellness Center operators and The L.A. Trust attended the online event. 

“The L.A. Trust believes there’s a strong correlation between student health and student achievement, and school-based health centers are key,” said Maryjane Puffer, executive director of The Los Angeles Trust for Children’s Health, which helped support the research. 

“Integration of health centers with schools adds an extra element,” said Dr. Kenny Ferenchak, underscoring the fact that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Dr. Ferenchak, a former UCLA researcher and pediatric resident at Seattle Children’s Hospital, University of Washington, notes that no measure currently exists to quantify the degree of integration for clinics and their partner schools.  

The presentation included remarks by Dr. Rebecca Dudovitz, a board member of The L.A. Trust and associate professor in general pediatrics and vice-chair of the Primary Care College at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. 

“Measuring school health integration can drive practice improvement initiatives among SBHC-school partners, identify SBHC and school characteristics that are associated with better integration, and test whether better integration is associated with better student health and academic outcomes,” they reported. 

Scanning the environment 

The Learning Collaborative included presentations by three organization facilitators with L.A. Unified Student Health and Human Services: Ana Griffin gave an update on Wellness Network performance; Gloria Velasquez conducted a whiteboard exercise on successes in outreach and services; and Victor Luna led a resiliency exercise.  

Robert Renteria, program manager of The L.A. Trust, and Erika Hernandez, project specialist for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, gave a presentation on Conducting an Environmental ScanPreparing for Implementation of Screening, Brief Intervention, Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) at Your School-Based Health Center. 

School-based health centers are encouraged to use the Environmental Scan to ensure they are providing accessible substance use prevention and treatment services. It reflects lessons learned by Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and The L.A. Trust from a multi-year initiative to integrate SBIRT into five school-based health centers across South Los Angeles. Funding for the project was provided by the California Community Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.