New 2025 Faculty Affiliates at CCPR
Please join us in warmly welcoming our new faculty affiliates to the California Center for Population Research! We’re excited to have them as part of our interdisciplinary community and look forward to the insights and contributions they will bring to our center.
See below for a list of our new affiliates. We encourage you to connect, collaborate, and help make them feel at home here at CCPR.
Bo-Kyung (Elizabeth) Kim, MSW, PhD
Dr. Bo-Kyung Elizabeth Kim is an Associate Professor in UCLA’s Department of Community Health Services, with interests in youth development, ethnic disparities, poverty, juvenile legal system, and community violence. Dr. Bo-Kyung’s research seeks to bridge the research-practice gap in service delivery models to address the mental, emotional, and behavioral health needs of youth in and at-risk for being involved in the juvenile justice system. She earned an MSW from the University of Michigan and a PhD from the University of Washington, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.
Poco D. Kernsmith, MSW, MPH, PhD
Dr. Poco D. Kernsmith is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Social Welfare, with interests in the social causes and correlates of the perpetration of violence. Dr. Kernsmith’s current research examines how school policies can help create inclusive, trauma-informed environments to prevent and respond to violence or threats of violence in middle and high schools. Dr. Kernsmith’s research has been funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Justice, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, and the Michigan State Policy Center. She earned her MSW from the University of Michigan, an MPH in Urban Public Health from Wayne State University, and a PhD in Social Welfare from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Naomi Zewde, MPH, PhD
Dr. Naomi Zewde is an Assistant Professor in UCLA’s Health Policy and Management Department, with research interests in public policies, health insurance, and household wealth. Her research examines how public institutions can deliver health, medical care, and economic security across the economic distribution. Funded by a RWJF grant, Dr. Zewde’s recent research evaluated the effects of the Covid-era child tax credit expansion and found increases in birth weight and gestational age as a result of the tax credit. Dr. Zewde earned her PhD in Health Policy and Administration with an Economics concentration from Penn State.
Jack Needleman, PhD, FAAN
Dr. Jack Needleman is a Professor in UCLA’s Department of Health Policy and Management. Dr. Needleman is a health economist and organizational management scholar. His research examines the impact of expansion of health insurance and insurance mandates on the availability, use and health impacts for populations, costs of health care; hospital, physician and nursing home payment; the determinants of quality in health care organizations; the design and implementation of quality and process improvement programs; role of ownership and payment on the behavior of health care providers; and impact of payment and health reform on access and costs of health care. Three of Dr. Needleman’s first-authored publications are designated patient safety classics by US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. For this achievement, he was the first recipient of the AcademyHealth Health Services Research Impact Award. Dr. Needleman received his Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University.
Kathryn Leifheit. MSPH, PhD
Dr. Kathryn Leifheit is an Assistant Professor in UCLA’s Department of Health Policy and Management, with research interests in housing insecurity, social policies, and population health. Drawing on methods from descriptive epidemiology, demography, longitudinal and multilevel modeling, and causal inference, Dr. Leifheit’s research examines housing policies and determinants of health for households and communities experiencing housing insecurity. She earned her MSPH and PhD from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and was a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health.
Ann Owens, PhD
Dr. Ann Owens is a Professor in UCLA’s Sociology Department, with research interests in the causes and consequences of social inequality with an emphasis on neighborhoods, education, housing, and social mobility. Dr. Owens’s research examines residential mobility patterns, school enrollment decision-making, and macro-level patterns of segregation, as well as how social policies, especially housing and education policies, shape social demographic processes and outcomes. Dr. Owens co-leads the Segregation Tracking Project, which aims to generate comprehensive residential and school segregation data, facilitate novel research on the causes and consequences, and develop policy solutions to segregation. Dr. Owens is a recipient of the William T. Grant Foundation Scholar award, Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the 2022 William Julius Wilson Early Career Award from the American Sociological Association. She was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford in 2024-25. Ann earned her PhD in sociology and social policy from Harvard University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.
Carlo Medici, PhD
Dr. Carlo Medici is an Assistant Professor in UCLA’s Department of Public Policy, with research interests in labor economics, political economy, and economic history. Dr. Medici’s research examines how population dynamics, particularly migration flows, shape long-term economic outcomes, including labor market institutions, economic development, inequality, and mobility. He studies these questions empirically, leveraging administrative records, newly digitized archival datasets, and publicly available microdata. Awarded by the Economic History Association, Dr. Medici is a 2025 recipient of the Author H. Cole Research Grant. Dr. Medici earned his PhD from Northwestern University and was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University.