Benjamin Meza
Benjamin Meza, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics, received his B.A. in Latin American Healthcare Studies from Davidson College in North Carolina, his M.S. in Biochemistry from the Medical College of Virginia, and his M.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Dr. Meza completed an internal medicine and pediatrics residency at Jackson Memorial Hospital-University of Miami and a General Internal Medicine research fellowship and M.H.S. at the Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg School of Public Health. He joined faculty in UCLA’s Department of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research in 2020.
Dr. Meza’s research lies at the intersection of public health and the social sciences. His work examines how social networks – the web of social relationships that connect us – can be both risk factors and assets for health promotion, either intrenching negative health behaviors or promoting virtuous cycles of community health improvement. Among other topics, he has studied the role of social networks in the health behaviors of people living in public housing and the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases through the networks of venues where individuals meet sex partners.
Currently, Dr. Meza’s work focuses on how adolescent social networks influence life course health development, particularly adolescent substance use and other risky behaviors. In 2021, he was accepted into the Life Course Research Network’s Scholars Program to study how a national career-technical initiative in middle and high schools help shape student social networks and health outcomes. Dr. Meza is the recipient of a UCLA Clinical Translational Science Institute KL2 Award to study the influence of cooperative experiences in high school on substance use including adolescent cannabis and alcohol. He collaborates with researchers in the departments of Medicine and Pediatrics as well as the School of Education and Information Studies and the Fielding School of Public Health.
Clinically, Dr. Meza is a practicing physician and preceptor in the Los Angeles County safety net system at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center and at UCLA Health. In striving for systems change that can achieve greater health equity for all, he has experience engaging in community organizing for health promotion in immigrant and refugee communities, as an asylee medical evaluator, and working on pipeline programs to bring more minoritized youth into professional career paths.
