Alex Ortega, PhD
Dean and Professor, Thompson School of Social Work & Public Health University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Alex Ortega, PhD, MPH, is the dean and professor of public health at the Thompson School of Social Work & Public Health, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He is a nationally recognized public health and health care policy scholar whose work focuses on health equity.
Ortega has had continuous National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for more than 25 years, totaling nearly $30 million, and is currently the principal investigator of five NIH-funded studies.
His research has improved understanding of the health risks and outcomes for Latino populations in the United States, including examinations of access to and utilization of health care, transforming corner stores in urban food swamps to improve healthy food access, and the factors that contribute to mis- and disinformation for Latino immigrants that lead to health care decision-making, among many other topics.
A UCLA Bruin, Ortega served as director and principal investigator for the UCLA Center for Population Health and Health Disparities. He also worked alongside the late Steve Wallace, associate center director, on the Latino Youth Health Study, which was developed to understand the experiences of Latino families with children in California as they seek health care and engage in their communities.
Conducted by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, in collaboration with Drexel University and UC Merced, the study aims to learn more about how Latino children’s family composition, their parent’s engagement with providers, and their parent’s perception about immigration influences their children’s access to health care.