KMadamba
e-Portfolio
College Scholars Program
"Approaches to Learning; Ways of Being; Habits of Doing"
Image Credit: From the UCLA Honors College and the 2019 College Scholars Themebook
The UCLA College Scholars is a pilot program created to transition from the traditional GPA-based Honors program to one that focuses more on experiential engagement and career building skills. The program is designed to give us a liberal arts-type education and encourage exploration in curricula outside of our majors (this includes participation in interdisciplinary courses like the unique UCLA Clusters). This gives us a chance to find what we are truly passionate about so we can eventually build a career centered around that particular interest.
My mentors have supported me in exploring, identifying, and pursuing opportunities that surrounded interests in child development, biology, health/medicine, and even music. As I reflect on first 3 years in undergrad, I realize I've been collecting puzzle pieces that symbolize these disciplines that have perked my interest. As I've taken more advanced courses and done community-engagement work, I'm finally seeing how these disciplines connect.
My entire undergraduate career, I've felt like these puzzle pieces were from too different of disciplines or areas. But now I'm excited to finally fit the pieces together as I begin my fourth year.
Capstone Project
Pediatric Health Component with Pilipinos for Community Health
With my passion for developmental psychology and early adversity, I’ve decided to do a community-engagement project that will promote the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of children, youth, and their families.
Our country is just not invested in this population (1), despite the science showing how critical childhood, especially the first 5 years of life, are in determining health outcomes in adulthood. In 2016, over 15 million children below 9 years old were low-income (2). Here in Los Angeles there are 2.2 million minors by 2021, and 30% of the youngest children (0-5 years old) are experiencing poverty. 470,000+ of these children/youth are in families enrolled in state food stamp programs, but many parents are fighting inaccessibility to basic needs in the midst of high inflation rates, and working around the clock to recover from the financial strain during the COVID-19 pandemic (3, 4, 5).
Left: from New York Time's article "How Other Nations Pay for Child Care. The U.S. Is an Outlier". Middle: Koball and Jiang (2018)'s article "Basic Facts about Low-Income Children." Right: From CalMatter's report "The hurdles facing California children, explained"
I hope to contribute to efforts that address child poverty and food insecurity with my capstone project, and am spearheading services for children/youth within Pilipinos for Community Health (PCH), an organization I am a student leader of. Through this pilot Pediatric Health project with PCH, I hope to provide the material support to families-- through food donations, advocacy work, and support at pediatric hospitals-- so they can provide the environment where their children feel safe, loved, and capable.
How is this capstone a culmination of my experiences at UCLA?
Last year was really pivotal in deciding my capstone project. Through the Applied Developmental Psychology (ADP) minor, I worked directly with the children I was serving and learned how critical secure, stable relationships are for development. My ADP internship also involved policy work with CACFP Roundtable where I helped advocate for an early education and child nutrition bill (Senate Bill 1481) while working with my mentor to establish the a story-collection project that elevates the voices of educators (I’m proud to say that the organization decided to continue the project we built!). In addition to ADP, I continued working with Pilipinos for Community Health (PCH) and did research for the COVID-19 Family Needs Study. Doing work for communities in need (often historically marginalized folks) helped me cultivate cultural humility and taught me about a strength-based approach to community engagement.
Ultimately, ADP, CACFP Roundtable, PCH, and the COVID-19 Family Needs Study helped me label these as social determinants of health, inspired me to advocate for underserved families/children, and have given me outlets to translate research into tangible change.
This Pediatric Health project was heavily inspired by a psychology course I took titled The Effect of Early Adversity. While my work with PCH showed me how culture and societal conditions contribute to our health, PSYCH 134K put a timeline on it all: the stress that follows poverty, adversity, and trauma have neurological impacts within the first 5 years of life. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are strongly correlated with many chronic health conditions, mental illness, and a 20-year shortened lifespan (6). Still, it is important to remember that outcomes are by no means deterministic, and we can prevent these negative outcomes by investing in our youngest community members and their families (7).
The ultimate goal: Reduce stress by providing resources for families. Promote resilience by creating an environment where children feel safe, secure, loved, and capable.
Image from Harvard's Center for the Developing Child and the Resilience Series
The Center on the Developing Child describes resilience like a scale. Each experience we have, positive or negative, is added and can tip the scale towards particular outcomes. The more positive experiences, the more the scale tips to positive outcomes.
But our brains and bodies are more sensitive to the surrounding environment when we are younger, a result of the high neuroplasticity early in life. The types of experiences we have early in life has the power to shift the fulcrum so the scale favors and predisposes the child to a particular outcome.
If we minimizing poverty and violence by providing resources that reduce parent stress, promote supportive caregiving practices, then the child's fulcrum shifts to favor positive outcomes. The child perseveres even if there are negative experiences. And we can continue "Stacking the Scales" by creating an environment of positive experiences so the negative don't outweight the positive. (8)
Researchers proposed 4 strategies of promoting resilience, which I and PCH's Pediatric Health component strive to follow (9):
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Mindfulness and positive coping strategies
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Eating well, lots of sleep, staying active
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Caring relationship with adult figures and caregivers (parents, teachers, counselors, etc.)
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Having safe, stable, and nurturing relationships and environments
To address issues like adverse childhood experiences and childhood poverty, experts have called for a multi-sector effort that combines medicine with social services, public health with child developmental and early education. We need change on all levels of a child's world, and a workforce that's interdisciplinary in order to support the whole child.
In addition direct community work, I hope that the Pediatric Health Project will bring together pre-health students interested in serving this population. They always say it takes a village to support children. I hope to be part other children’s village, and build a group of students that can be part of that village, too.
“Many things we need, can wait. The child cannot. Now is the time, the bones are formed, his mind developed. To him we cannot say tomorrow, his name is Today.” – Gabriela Mistrál