Selena Destiny Melgoza

Selena is a second-year Master of Public Policy student at UCLA. As a Policy Fellow with the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute, Selena is dedicated to researching the systemic causes of the disproportionate environmental and health burdens on disadvantaged communities. Throughout her work, she hopes to develop policy solutions to create thriving, sustainable environments. 

At UCLA, Selena also worked with the Office of Government & Community Relations to conduct research on UCLA’s community and economic engagement with the larger Los Angeles region and encourage collaborations with local community leaders. She is also an active volunteer with the American Mexican Association. For her academic achievement and dedication to her community, Selena has received the 2022 Minerva Scholarship and the UCLA Luskin Second-Year Department Fellowship. 

Prior to graduate school, Selena attended UC Berkeley and graduated with a degree in Society & Environment and a minor in Public Policy. Motivated by her lived experiences as a first-generation, low-income, and system-impacted Latina from Los Angeles, Selena is committed to advancing environmental justice and creating sustainable policy solutions.

Selena is working alongside Hana Abdelatty, Adan Garcia, Dimitri English and Austin Mendoza on a project to address heat inequities across Los Angeles.  

Project Overview

Our project focuses on how the City of Los Angeles’ Climate Emergency Mobilization Office (CEMO) can equitably address the disproportionate impacts of extreme heat on frontline communities across Los Angeles. Specifically, our research analyzes how CEMO and the City of Los Angeles can better incorporate equity across their heat policy and planning efforts. 

Throughout this work, we center community knowledge on the availability of local resources to advance resilience, examine the success of existing outreach efforts, and evaluate potential policy solutions to ensure that the most vulnerable groups are not left behind. Specifically, we create a geospatial analysis on extreme heat vulnerability across Los Angeles, conduct interviews with academic experts, and lead community expert focus groups and a survey. During this process, we also consulted with community-based organizations across Los Angeles to refine our research questions and get feedback on our outreach strategies and data collection.

Why is this topic, specifically, important to your group?

Extreme heat disproportionately impacts communities who have been historically marginalized and excluded from the policymaking process in Los Angeles. When we discovered that Marta Segura, CEMO’s Director, was also named the first Chief Heat Officer of Los Angeles, we reasoned that there must be ample room for new research on extreme heat to inform the future of local policies and programs. Connecting directly with CEMO’s office, we learned that they were very enthusiastic about the prospect of working together and incorporating more community-engaged research into their work. We are thrilled to use this project as an opportunity to uplift community voices and provide an updated framework for CEMO to better incorporate community needs into their work.

Who are the partners involved in this project and how will your group be working with them?

Our student team of UCLA researchers worked closely with CEMO and the Liberty Hill Foundation. These partners provided critical advising, connections with local community-based organizations, and the funding needed to compensate community members for their time and space. 

How does your group hope that this project will impact the field moving forward?

Los Angeles is experiencing the effects of increasingly extreme heat due to climate change. While the hazards of heat waves affect everyone, they have a disproportionate impact on low-income communities of color. These communities face the greatest vulnerability to extreme heat-related illness and death, so it is critical that we meaningfully include them in the process of creating policy. 

Ultimately, we hope that our project will encourage cities across the country to take a more community-engaged approach to inform their climate and extreme heat policymaking efforts. We also hope that this project will be the first step towards developing extreme heat policy and programs that directly benefit the most vulnerable Angelenos.