Lauren “Lorena” Perez is a project coordinator within the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and UCLA Center for Cancer Prevention and Control Research. She currently supports an NIH R01-funded study aimed at increasing colonoscopic follow-up rates after abnormal stool-based colorectal cancer (CRC) screening results, in partnership with two large federally qualified health centers supporting historically marginalized communities within Los Angeles County. While primarily focused on CRC efforts, she occasionally supports other research projects within the center, including periodic Spanish-language stakeholder interviews for a lung cancer screening study.

She earned her B.A. in Psychology at Cal Poly Pomona in 2022, and her M.A. in Psychology from Cal State Los Angeles in 2024. As lab manager of the PROSPER Lab, she was instrumental in establishing a psychoneuroimmunology laboratory and in validating an experimental trauma and acute stress paradigm in an ethnically diverse sample at CSULA. Concurrently, she served as a graduate research assistant within the Sumner Stress Lab (Psych Dept, UCLA), where she explored the association between traumatic events and cardiovascular health, and in the ELHA Lab (Neurology Dept, UCLA) to combat systemic barriers driving Alzheimer’s disease disparities within Latinx communities.

Lauren “Lorena” credits her beloved immigrant grandparents (Jose, Carmen y Bertha) as the foundation of her passion for health equity research – a passion later nurtured through the opportunities earned during her graduate fellowships (NIH LA Basin Bridges to the PhD & Sally Casanova Pre-Doc), and sustained in her current role within the UCLA Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Equity. Outside of the lab, Lauren enjoys exploring local coffee shops and spending time outdoors with her dogs, Chica and Santana.