Manal J. Aboelata is the deputy executive director of Prevention Institute, a national nonprofit that promotes health, safety, and wellbeing through thriving, equitable communities.  She joined Prevention Institute in 1998 and is based in the organization’s Los Angeles office, which is located in Leimert Park. Her work emphasizes policy and community-based approaches, and demonstrates an overarching commitment to working with under-resourced communities to foster health and safety.

For ten years, Aboelata provided leadership and direction to the Strategic Alliance for Healthy Food and Activity Environments, a statewide network of over 900 members working to prevent chronic disease through a focus on built environment and food policy in California. She founded and chaired California’s Joint Use Statewide Taskforce (JUST) to increase neighborhood-level access to school playgrounds through agreements between school districts and local governments. She currently oversees Prevention Institute’s California Community Prevention and Health Equity Strategy and convenes and facilitates the Healthy, Equitable, and Active Land Use (HEALU) Network, a Los Angeles-based collaborative transforming the norms and culture of land use and planning so that residents are involved in proactively envisioning, planning, and overseeing the creation of healthy, equitable neighborhood environments.

Aboelata is the author of numerous publications, including Healthy Development Without Displacement: Realizing the Vision of Healthy Communities for all; The Built Environment and Health: 11 Profiles of Neighborhood Transformation; and A Decade of Advocacy: The Strategic Alliance for Healthy Food and Activity Environments.

She holds a master’s degree in public health (epidemiology) from the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2009, she was inducted into the UCLA School of Public Health Alumni Hall of Fame. In 2017, she was awarded a Stanton Fellowship from the Durfee Foundation.