health promotion in social networks & complex systems  

Kayla de la Haye is a Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Fielding School of Public Health and director of the University of Southern California’s (USC) Food Systems Institute. She works to promote health and prevent disease by applying social network analysis and systems science to critical public health issues.

Her research investigates how family and community social networks and broader social and structural health-related needs interact to shape healthy eating, nutrition security, and chronic disease risk, and designs interventions that leverage these dynamics to promote health. It also explores the role of social networks in group problem solving in families, teams, and coalitions. This work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the American Heart Association.

Dr. de la Haye was previously faculty at the University of Southern California and a scientist at the RAND Corporation. In 2018, she received the Freeman Award from the International Network of Social Network Analysis (INSNA) for significant contributions to the study of social structure. She holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Adelaide, Australia.