Understanding the systems that shape health, and partnering with communities to change them. 

Kayla de la Haye is a Professor of Community Health Sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, where she directs the Food Studies Graduate Certificate Program. She works to build healthier, more equitable food systems by applying social network science, systems science, and community-engaged research.

She studies how social networks, food environments, and policies interact to shape what people eat, their access to healthy food, and their risk of chronic disease, and she designs interventions that use these insights to promote health. She also explores how social networks help families, teams, and coalitions solve problems together.

In Los Angeles County, she partners with government and community organizations to track food and nutrition insecurity, map the local food system, and inform food policy and programs. As part of the NIH Nutrition for Precision Health Consortium, she combines social science, AI, and computer modeling to advance precision nutrition, tailoring dietary guidance to people's lives and circumstances. Her work is funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the American Heart Association.

Dr. de la Haye previously founded and directed the University of Southern California Food Systems Institute and was a scientist at the RAND Corporation. She is a Fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine and a recipient of the Freeman Award from the International Network for Social Network Analysis. She holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Adelaide, Australia.