Valerie Ruelas

Valerie Ruelas is the Director of Community Advocacy for the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles Obesity Center and Director of the Community Diabetes Initiative of the University of Southern California - Keck School of Medicine. She manages the program’s research grants and projects including 4 type 1 diabetes clinical trials and three center grants: LookAhead Action for Health in Diabetes, Vitamin D and Type 2 Diabetes -D2d and the UCLA/USC Center for Population Health and Health Disparities (P50). The primary study population for these center grants are low-income Latinos. Through various funding opportunities she has conducted community participatory research to assess community needs to reduce obesity and related chronic conditions, to establish a farmers’ market in Watts, conduct community nutrition education and healthy cooking classes at the East Los Angeles Farmers’ Market, as well as evaluate those projects. She additionally serves as faculty to the P50 Research and Education program to provide expertise in community engagement and sits on the national Project Managers subcommittee. She is currently Co-Principal Investigator on a study to evaluate the impact of menu labeling on families with children ages 5-17 and adolescents and a on a study to evaluate the impact of lifestyle change in a Faith-Based setting. Her overall goal is to continue to seek funding in order to implement and evaluate medical and community based programs aimed at reducing obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease as well as implement policy change at the local, state and national level.