Isaac Lara

Ernesto Isaac Lara (he/him) is a lived experience researcher, peer support advocate, and youth mental health activist on a mission to build a happier, healthier global community.

This fall, Isaac will join the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health as an incoming Eugene Cota-Robles Fellow, pursuing his PhD in Health Policy & Management. His doctoral research will focus on youth peer support in school-based settings, examining how peer support models can be implemented equitably across diverse educational and community contexts to advance youth mental health equity and social justice.

Currently, Isaac serves as a Research Assistant leading Lived Experience Initiatives at the Mental Health for All Lab at Harvard Medical School. This includes:

• The EMPOWER Peer Support Initiative: A global effort to develop a digital peer support curriculum equipping people with lived experience of recovery to provide mutualistic, recovery-oriented mental health support

• Research Ready, a Wellcome Trust-funded initiative advancing the authentic and ethical integration of people with lived experience in mental health research.

Isaac’s scholarly work has been published in Nature Medicine, PLOS Mental Health, and the Harvard Review of Psychiatry. His advocacy extends across global mental health, including: advising the World Health Organization’s STAG-MNS on policy priorities including youth mental health, AI, and lived experience integration; contributing to the Lancet Psychiatry Commission on Lived Experience in Mental Health Research; and advancing youth peer support policy through Mental Health America’s Youth Policy Accelerator. He serves as Board President of Youth MOVE National and as a board member of Aves Mental Health, organizations advancing youth-led peer advocacy and global lived experience leadership across 40+ and 60+ countries respectively.

Rooted in his own lived expertise as a queer, first-generation Mexican American, Isaac’s work is grounded in a simple conviction: That lived experience is not a liability, but a source of expertise that has been undervalued for too long