Marjorie Kagawa Singer, PhD, FAAN, is a faculty associate at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and a research professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. For 45 years, she has worked as a hospital-based clinician and academic researcher focused on reducing and ultimately eliminating health disparities in communities of color by more effectively identifying cultural processes of health behavior along the entire continuum of care, primarily with individuals and families with cancer and other chronic diseases.
A major theme in her work is to test the cultural equivalence of concepts and strategies used to promote the health of members of diverse communities. Her career is characterized by levels of impact in health behaviors and systemic interactions. Methodologically, Kagawa Singer uses a mixed paradigm and mixed method approach of inductive qualitative and deductive quantitative strategies, utilizing community-based participatory principles.
Kagawa Singer also assists community members through applied practice, to develop and hone their own skills to sustain and build on the benefits of the knowledge and expertise they gain through these partnerships. Her main focus is to demonstrate to funders and academic partners the value of addressing the rich cultural differences among diverse communities from an asset rather than a deficit model with chronic illnesses and in health promotion.
She has worked mainly with the highly heterogeneous Asian American and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander population groups. Her work has also encompassed the major groups of color including African Americans, Hispanic/Latino/as, and Native Americans.
Kagawa Singer has a master's degree in nursing from the UCLA School of Nursing and a master's and doctorate in anthropology from UCLA.
