From the Director
January 13, 2023
Happy new year and welcome to 2023! Certainly, 2022 turned out to be quite a tumultuous year socially, politically, globally, financially, climactically, and, for many people, personally; therefore, it may be tempting to want to put 2022 behind us altogether. But, like every year, 2022 also held promise at the beginning. My hope is not that we enter 2023 as an escape from the turmoil of 2022, but that we learn from 2022 in order to move through 2023 with both optimism and clear-eyed vision.
Some of you are new to the Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice & Health. The Center was launched five years ago on the inaugural Indigenous People’s Day in Los Angeles, October 9, 2017. It serves as a hub for researchers, students, staff and community members based at UCLA and elsewhere to collectively study and address the public health implications of various forms of racism. Founded based on the principles of Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCRP), Center affiliates are involved in rigorous research, innovative teaching and community engagement all focused on racial and social justice. You can find some of our publications and a video highlighting our activities during the COVID pandemic below:
Racism: Science & Tools for the Public Health Professional – selected as an academic title for 2020 by the American Library Association
Applying Critical Race Theory in Health Equity Research – a special issue of Ethnicity & Disease
The Rapid Assessment of COVID Evidence (RACE) Series - a special collection of papers currently being published in Ethnicity & Disease
The COVID Task Force on Racism & Equity – video aired at the 2021 annual meeting of the American Public Health Association showcasing the work of the Task Force, which is a collaboration between UCLA and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine & Science
Last June, I introduced you to the Center’s first major cohort of PhD graduates, who had been deeply entrenched in antiracism scholarship, research, teaching and community engagement over the course of their doctoral programs. They represent a critical mass of emerging racism researchers. For instance, they constituted two-thirds of all doctorates earned in Community Health Sciences at UCLA in 2022. They have studied Critical Race Theory extensively, which is rare among public health programs. And, each of them is now completing postdoctoral fellowships, which will position them to shape the field through their research and future teaching. It will be exciting to see how collectively they will significantly bolster the capacity of public health to respond effectively to emergent threats to health equity.
The new year is a perfect time to introduce current student affiliates and their wide-ranging backgrounds and interests. So, I highlight just several of them here: Ale Cabral, Aisha Fletcher, James Huynh, Cindy Le, Erin Manalo, Ezinne Nwankwo, Dillon Rodriguez, and Taylor Rogers.
The most senior of these students--James, Ezinne and Taylor--are doctoral candidates, which means they have successfully defended their dissertation proposals and are now actively conducting the proposed dissertation research.
This group of eight students is poised to influence policy, which is essential for responding to health inequities. Aisha is a current Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar (HPRS); James and Ezinne are recent alumni of the program. The program prepares students to become leaders advancing policy solutions to health inequities.
UCLA public health doctoral students complete a minor program of study while earning the doctorate. Cindy Le, who is a Robert and Melinda Gates Foundation Scholar, may be the first student whose minor is in information sciences. This will make her work extremely timely and relevant. Most importantly, it will provide her with the substance knowledge and skills needed not only to use emerging information science and data science technologies, but to create them and ensure they reflect core social justice principles.
Issues of immigration—its intersectionality with racism and other structural injustices—is a theme in the dissertation work and other activities of these students. Erin Manalo proudly draws on her identity in advancing anticolonial work that centers the people of the Philippines and recognizes salient gender dynamics. James Huynh’s focus on LGBT activism in Orange County, CA centers the experiences of the Vietnamese refugee communities there. Drawing on Queer and Trans of Color Critique as well as Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCRP) and traditional socio-behavioral theory, this work has the potential to inform future scholarship in queer studies, ethnic/area/American studies, and public health.
Ale Cabral has earned an impressive reputation for her selfless leadership roles in community-engaged research and community service. Her longstanding areas of interest include social determinants of HIV inequities, HIV and aging, substance use, and LGBTQ+ health. She coordinates the RACE Series being published in Ethnicity & Disease. It is remarkable that her grants portfolio as a doctoral student in Community Health Sciences exceeds that of some junior faculty.
Aisha and Dillon are the newest PhD students at the Center. Their broad areas of interest are tied to specific populations whose humanity continues to undervalued in society. Aisha is interested in improving the life expectancy and quality of life of African American men. Her interest in structural racism stems from the fact that so many of them die prematurely due to conditions that could have been prevented. Dillon’s work serves as a reminder that despite all of the pharmaceutical advances that have been made since the first cases of what is now known as AIDS were diagnosed, HIV continues to have a significant impact on the lives people of color, especially gay and bisexual men as well as transgender women. These populations experience the compounded impacts of intersecting factors tied to poverty and economic injustice, mass incarceration, homophobia and transphobia, nativism, limited access to care, stigma, mistrust of the public health sector, and racism. Through their work Aisha and Dillon seek not only to identify key determinants of the disparities, but also to center, value and show love for members of these populations.
To address the myriad of ways social injustices evolve over time, many Center affiliates are developing novel concepts and methods for research or interventions targeting racism. Among these students, for instance, Ezinne’s research is raising new questions about the need to understand differences, similarities and overlap between residential segregation imposed on recent immigrants of color vs their voluntary decisions to reside in ethnic enclaves.
Attention to healthcare is an increasingly important part of the nation’s public health agenda. Several of the students are focused on this in some way. Taylor has been working as an “outsider within” the field of health services research to identify institutional drivers of inequities in healthcare and document factors influencing the diversity of the workforce.
In addition to their research and scholarship, these students are actively engaged in service to the field and community. For instance, Ale co-designed and led an innovative, interactive online version of the annual Minority Health Conference at UCLA that incorporated yoga, mindfulness, exercise as well as an amazing soundtrack into a research conference program. Participants were so engaged that participation was still high at the end of the day-long event.
This is the final year of the center in its current format. You will have to stay tuned for the next phase of our work, which builds on all we have learned thus far in a new home and format.
If you have not had an opportunity to get involved yet, you do still have time to participate in the journal clubs, book club and formal presentations. As people who run track know, it is important to round the final bend of the race with a strong kick. We will continue to expand the movement for health justice through the remainder of the academic year by engaging with leaders of the next generation of public health centers on racism and health and by amplifying the work of the historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) with whom we most closely collaborate, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine & Science and Howard University. I do hope you’ll join us.
Thank you for supporting this work. Your support is invaluable. Looking forward to continuing the journey with you and with new partners.
In struggle for health equity,
Chandra
