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UCIUniversity of California, Irvine April 15, 2021 Daisy Perez, Assistant to the City Manager City of Santa Ana 20 Civic Center Plaza Santa Ana, CA 92701 Office of the Vice Chancellor for health Affairs 1001 Health Sciences Road Irvine, CA 92697 -3950 Re: HHS FOA# MP-CPI-21-006, Advancing Health Literacy to Enhance Equitable Community Responses to COVID-19 Dear Daisy Perez: I am writing to express the enthusiastic support and commitment of the University of California, Irvine (UCI), for the application submitted by the city of Santa Ana, California for the Health Equity and Literacy in Orange County (HEAL-OC) initiative. As a Minority Serving Institution (MSI), designated as both an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander -Serving Institution (AANAPISI) and a Hispanic -Serving Institution (HSI), UCI has a long-standing relationship with the city and the other community partners included in this proposal. These relationships —and subsequent founding of the OC Health Equity COVID-19 Community Academic Partnership (OCHEC-CAP) under the leadership of Dean Bernadette Boden-Albala of the UCI Program in Public Health —have been integral to our joint efforts to identify and reduce disparities in COVID-19 burden throughout our community and to contribute evidence -based recommendations for equitable allocation of resources. Dean Boden-Albala and the Program in Public Health have led this important work with Santa Ana and surrounding communities on behalf of the university throughout the pandemic. UCI also has a contractual agreement with the Orange County Health Care Agency to receive and analyze COVID-19 data at regular intervals. We are pleased to commit the time and talent of diverse faculty and staff from the Program in Public Health and the School of Medicine to leading the evaluation and quality improvement phases of the program, reporting periodically back to community partners on progress toward program objectives, and malting evidence -based recommendations to accelerate progress toward program objectives. Further, Dean Boden-Albala has committed to independently funding a data analyst and manager to support UCI's efforts on this project. As always, we look forward to a process of learning, collaborating, and innovating collectively with the city and other partners and to leveraging our expertise in research to contribute to the successful planning and implementation of this program in our community. Sincerely, QZ Steve . Ga to , MA, MD, PhD, FAAP Distinguished Professor, Pediatrics, Physiology & Biophysics, and Pharmaceutical Sciences Susan and Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences