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Ahmad Elhaija

Norco College

​Alumni Spotlight (2020)

Ahmad Elhaija, former Norco College STEM Scholar and current UCLA student launched a mobile health clinic to increase access to care. Elhaija used a $15,000 Strauss Foundation scholarship to help provide affordable care to low-income and refugee communities in Los Angeles. Read Ahmad's story here.

Ahmad Elhaija is a third-year pre medical student at UCLA majoring in Psychobiology. While at UCLA, Ahmad has founded the 501 (c)3 non profit social enterprise, International Collegiate Health Initiative (ICHI) with the mission to improve the overall health of the communities it serves by providing high quality medical, nutritional, and social services. He is an alumni of the Pre-Medical Enrichment Program at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and works as a research assistant at the UCLA Department of General Internal Medicine and Health Services. He currently serves as CEO of ICHI and was named a 2019 Strauss Scholar and 2020 Truman Finalist. Ahmad is a proud Arab American who has volunteered with Access California Services since the age of 12, mentoring immigrant and refugee children, he has also worked as a United Nations World Refugee Day committee volunteer through the Refugee Forum of Orange County. For his work with the Arab American community he was a recipient of the Arab American Institute's Helen Abbott Community Service Award. His main current project is to continue the advancement of ICHI’s mobile medical clinic in the cities of Maywood and Bell in Southeast Los Angeles, and expand his non-profit to college campuses across the globe.

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