The most vile professor in this department. Save yourself the drama. Drop immediately as she will tarnish your GPA.

This professor granted some absences due to my health issues, commitments to my 191 class, and the impact of closures. However, later on throughout the quarter, unbeknownst to me at the time, the UCLA health center made a significant error in my test results necessitating additional time off to address the situation.

This professor initially understood the severity of my situation, but in the end, penalized me for having missed classes, all approved by her. I thought she was kind, supportive, and really there to back her students, but in the end, she graded me in bad faith. Didn't get a horrible grade, but I shouldn't have been penalized.

Ended up filing a grade grievance and sought a civil rights/discrimination attorney to determine the appropriate course of action in addressing this matter.

Update: lawsuits were filed against the university and the professor individually.
Best of luck, everyone.

I was initially intimidated entering this class as a STEM major (I took this class as a global health minor) since my history knowledge is quite lacking, but I ended up really enjoying this class overall for its overall workload and the content! The class covered a good variety of Latin American medical experiments that I would have never learned about in any other class, and it was interesting to see different angles/approaches to analyzing these historical events. One important thing to note is that attendance is MANDATORY!

Professor O'Brien was seriously the BEST because she was more than well-versed in this area but also happily took discussion contributions from our class of ~40. While I didn't always have something to say in class, lots of other classmates did and it was intriguing to see everyone's contributions. It wasn't necessary to talk in class but it would definitely help your grade if you did make consistent contributions. Workload was VERY light in this class -- only some readings to do per class (that I skimmed) that required at least two annotations (I often did 5+ just to cover all my bases and because the readings were long), occasional assignments (graded VERY leniently and due at the end of the quarter), and a final paper (only 4-5 pages). She's a pretty easy and forgiving grader/instructor, and I wish I had gotten to talk to her more.

Overall, I HIGHLY recommend this class for every reason possible! :))

About the coursework/graded assignments: Homework each week included leaving 2 comments on each reading posted (I skimmed through a lot of the readings and I probably dedicated around 1.5 hours per week for it). We also had short activities due at our discussion sections (creating venn diagrams, writing short responses to videos/texts, annotating articles) which took 15-30 minutes each week. At the end of the course, we also had to write a 3 page essay about how one of our historian skills have improved due to this course. The final is just sharing the activities we did throughout the quarter and the 3 page essay with our peers. Overall, the workload is extremely light and manageable and if you try, it is impossible to not get an A.
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About the course material: Each week we covered a different topic: pre-modern medicine, slavery and medicine, germ theory, eugenics, the Flexner report, the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments, the Civil Rights Movement, The Cold War, Schizophrenia and homosexuality, ongoing healthcare disparities. All of the things we covered were genuinely interesting (and I’m not a STEM major) and changed my perspective on medicine greatly. I truly believe this class holds immense value, particularly to those looking to go into healthcare as you can really see how history has created health disparities that may not be obvious otherwise (just google race correction). No textbooks required.
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Lectures and Discussion: Attendance was mandatory in both and the professor used Arkaive to track attendance. However, the things we learned in lecture are not used in any of the graded assignments as the professor wanted us to learn and enjoy the topics.
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About the professor: Professor O’Brien was genuinely one of my favorite professors at UCLA so far. She has a clear passion for what she is teaching and is always excited to answer questions and discuss with her students. She is also one of those professors who wants to reward students for their efforts and wants to give her students As. You can also tell that she dedicates a lot of her time to the course (reading and responding to a lot of student’s comments on the homework despite not really having to).
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About the TA: Meg was the TA for all the discussion sections and I believe the professor has repeatedly kept her as TA in the past. She was good at facilitating discussion and creating a comfortable atmosphere (I’ve had other TAs make discussion a little awkward sometimes and uncomfortable to participate, but this wasn’t the case). She was also the person who grades the weekly activities and checks to make sure they are correct (99% of the time gives green check mark which means 100% or gives clear feedback of what your missing and allows you to fix them).
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Overall, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS CLASS, THIS PROFESSOR, and THIS TA!!