By Peggy McInerny, Director of Communications

“What's really important is not only what I learned in Australia, but how it is seen through a U.S. lens as well," said UCLA sophmore Fiona Xie about the global health travel study program.

UCLA International Institute, January 14, 2026 — UCLA launched a new, four-week travel study program in global health last summer (July 14–August 8, 2025). The first iteration of the program in Australia was a resounding success among Bruin participants, who included social science majors and pre-med students majoring in the life and physical sciences.

The four-week travel program was spearheaded by lifelong friends and colleagues Dr. Marco Giovannini (UCLA) and Dr. Dick Quan (Holdsworth House Medical Practice, Sydney), who first met during their medical studies when each attended an international training in the other’s home country (Italy and Australia, respectively).

“We created this inaugural UCLA Global Health Travel Study Program in Australia to help students experience health systems not just as observers, but as participants,” said Dr. Giovannini, professor in residence in the department of head and neck surgery of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of UCLA Health’s Neural Tumor Research Laboratory.

The summer program explores the social determinants of health, with a particular focus on providing care to underserved and Indigenous populations in such areas as sexual health, mental health, HIV and addiction. Students complete two courses and earn eight UCLA credits; their studies culminate in a group poster project based on their own research.

“From Sydney to Cairns and Yarrabah, they met clinicians, community leaders and Aboriginal health workers who showed what culturally grounded care truly means,” continued Giovannini. “What impressed me most was how naturally our students engaged — asking sharp, thoughtful questions that opened new conversations everywhere we went.

“For many, it was their first real look at global health in action, and they approached it with genuine curiosity and empathy. Seeing their creativity and maturity in those settings was incredibly rewarding — and left me deeply optimistic about the kind of leaders they will become.”

Student experience

Three global health minors interviewed for this article greatly enjoyed the program and found it highly relevant to their studies and career plans.

“I really liked how I was able to get a first-hand experience of the health care system in a country outside of the U.S., said Tanvi Mahajani (UCLA 2027), a pre-med junior majoring in neuroscience and minoring in global health. “I’ve been to India multiple times [where her grandfather is a surgeon], but I haven’t seen the inside of multiple clinics and how the system works.”

Her interest in global health — sparked in part by Evan Waters’ book “Crazy Like Us” and its argument that culture shapes how mental disorders manifest — and a longstanding interest in brain health has the UCLA junior leaning toward a possible future career in neurology or neurosurgery. She currently works as an undergraduate research assistant at the O’Neill Lab (Semel Institute) and is a research director at the Institute of Neuro Innovation’s UCLA chapter on campus.

“We saw settings in the city business district of Sydney and were also able to go into rural areas to see how the healthcare system and clinics operate there,” continued Mahajani. “There was a huge emphasis on how cultural backgrounds and culturally appropriate conversations play an important role in conversations, which was probably the most important message I took from the program.”

“I think the reason I enjoyed it so much is [that] I do want to be a physician, but I also want to have that wider-lens perspective of ‘What impact am I making in my community beyond just what treatments I’m prescribing for my patients?’”

Senior Tiana Hoang (UCLA 2026), a human biology and society major with minors in global health and Asian American studies, noted, “Being in Australia and able to examine the ways that various minority communities are being treated and prioritized by the Australian government … was such a stark contrast from what’s going on right now in the U.S.”

Hoang is a researcher with the UCLA Heat Lab, and currently works as both a student assistant in the UCLA Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Equity and as a SCOPE Patient Health Advocate, a collaborative effort between UCLA students and physicians to connect underserved patients with community health resources.

“We were able to see how the Australian health care system has been working not only to make reparations for its past relationship with its Indigenous communities,” Hoang said, “but also how it strives to overcome taboos surrounding mental health, sexual health and substance use.

“We often didn’t have a lecture-based format, [but] presentations from representatives and workers of various organizations, whether health providers or nonprofit organizations. Then once or twice a week, we would do clinical rotations where we shadowed doctors during their medical appointments at the Holdsworth House Medical Practice.”

A three-to-four-day trip to Cairns specially focused on Indigenous populations, where “we were able to interact with Indigenous community members and physicians who specialize in working with them and providing culturally competent care,” she continued. While there, students also visited a base of the Royal Flying Doctors Service, an organization that flies medical teams to remote rural areas to provide care.

“Being able to speak directly to the people who worked with targeted populations, or were part of these populations themselves, was immersive,” Hoang said. The program, she concluded, “definitely solidified my interest and passion in going into public health… It also expanded what I perceived the field of public health to be and the different kind of routes you can take.”

Fiona Xie (UCLA 2027), a sophomore majoring in neuroscience, said, “I picked global health [as a minor] because it gave me a very broad scope. What also drew me to the minor was that I wanted to know more about comparative medicine.”

Xie works as a student researcher at Rexach Lab of the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and at the Banerjee Lab of the UCLA Undergraduate Research Consortium in Functional Genetics. She also volunteers with the geriatric care unit at UCLA’s Santa Monica and Ronald Reagan Hospitals.

The aspiring research physician loves research and appreciates both Western and Eastern medicine. As a member the Asian Pacific Health Corps at UCLA, she participates in local LA health fairs to assist Asian American immigrants who have some experience of Eastern medicine to better understand the philosophy and benefits of Western evidence-based medicine.

The travel study program in Australia was, in Xie’s words, “so worth it. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who has any interest in the topic.” She added, “It was such a gift that our housing accommodation was funded, because that made the financial aspect of attending a little bit easier.

“What’s really important is not only what I learned in Australia, but how it is seen through a U.S. lens as well. Plus it gave me a good blend of the research aspect with the clinical aspect, which I really enjoyed.”

Poster projects presented to a medical conference

Students in the program presented group poster projects on different aspects of health care in Australia to a medical conference for doctors at the end of the program.

Mahajani worked on culturally appropriate addiction services for Aboriginal communities. In addition to researching these services, she said, “We compared [those services to those available] to our Native American populations in the U.S. and found there were both similarities and differences between them.

“At the beginning, I wish that [the program directors] had given us more support, but at the end when we were presenting, I felt like it was more our own project,” she concluded.

Hoang worked on a project on how the social determinants of health affected food deserts in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Indigenous communities in Australia. The project included both a literature review and a policy assessment of the country’s Close the Gap initiative.

“It was an experience that I feel like a lot of undergraduates don’t usually get: speaking in front of an audience of medical professionals about what you’ve been researching,” said Hoang.

Xie’s project considered the impacts of geographic location on services for First Nations people, such as elder care. “One of the interesting results we found was in urban areas, the health outcomes were actually worse.

“And it wasn’t because of an access issue; it was issues of cultural sensitivity and cultural education… it was that lack of feeling comfortable,” she explained.

Based on these students’ experiences, the travel study program seems sure to draw many undergraduate Bruins with an interest in comparative health care in the future, giving them both an inside look at a universal health care system and ideas for medicine and public health careers.

See video recap of the program by UCLA Study Abroad Ambassador Natalie Carrillo Andrade.

Published: Wednesday, January 14, 2026