Student Voices

I’ve always been drawn to the intersections of social justice and health, particularly the relationships between food and chronic diseases, such as obesity and diabetes, and how these issues disproportionately affect communities of color.   Prior to making my way to the UC Irvine Joe C. Wen School of Population & Public Health, I thought sociology

Breaking New Ground in Healthcare Analytics  As a public health researcher focusing on stroke and related outcomes, I’ve always been fascinated by the complexity of medical data, e.g. extensive information about health conditions, symptoms, and treatments across various settings. What often struck me was how traditional analysis methods struggle to effectively handle this wealth of

What happens when misinformation campaigns lead to threats against public health officials, when political expediency overrules evidence, and when the very people who seek to protect the public are vilified?   Principally grounded in evidence-based practice, public health now finds itself navigating a contested landscape. The rapid spread of information across media platforms has turned public

“Legal status” is a critical title assigned by governments that dictates access to many socioeconomic resources, it also matters for health and overall well-being. “Illegality” is the process of assigning opportunities and resources for immigrant subgroups based on state-created legal status categories (e.g., undocumented/unauthorized, lawful permanent residents, naturalized). As public health researchers, we can shed

Doctoral student and licensed clinical audiologist, Shade Avery Kirjava (they/them), reveals the inequities that exist in our healthcare system and why the need for reform in hearing health care must happen now.

Language and discourse are important tools that when carefully chosen, describe the magnitude and scope of a topic. Throughout the academic literature and public policy, the term “food desert” is used to describe areas such as neighborhoods, zip codes, or census tracts, where there is a lack of accessible healthy food like fresh produce. Unsurprisingly,

Let’s face it. We have a love affair with data. With the rise in data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, public health has increasingly become a numbers and data-driven field. We aspire to create studies where we can get the most data points, because the more we have, the more reliable our inferences about a population

What is the role of religion in public health research? Whatever your response, I offer it as an important question to consider for both public health research and practice. Nearly 84% of the world’s population is religiously affiliated, including nearly 70% of the U.S. population. In spite of trends indicating secularization of the U.S., over 65% of Americans

Fear, worry, and stress are normal responses to perceived or real threats, and at times when we are faced with uncertainty or the unknown. So, it is no surprise that many of us are experiencing fear through the COVID-19 pandemic. Added to the fears surrounding our health and safety in the presence of COVID-19 are

Agricultural workers across the country have been hit hard by COVID-19. In a white paper published by the University of California, Berkeley, researchers noted that in October, approximately 20% of farmworkers participating in a SARS-CoV-2 study tested positive for the virus compared to 5% of the general population in the state of California. While Governor Newsom’s vaccine