Three UCLA professors have been honored with the Los Angeles County’s “Gold Eagle Award” for their service on the county’s COVID-19 predictive modeling team. Team members included Thomas Belin, professor of biostatistics at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health; Andrea Bertozzi, UCLA’s Betsy Wood Knapp Professor of Innovation and Creativity; and Rick Schoenberg, professor of statistics.
The team, which was assembled by the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, included interdisciplinary collaborators from both within and beyond the county. Together they developed a system for collecting daily data from all the county hospitals that accepted 911 calls regarding acute COVID-19-related hospitalizations. That data was used to predict hospitalizations, demand for acute care beds and intensive care unit resources and deaths related to COVID-19.
The award was one of two such accolades among this year’s “Top Ten” award winners recognized by the county's quality and productivity commission at a ceremony in October.
