Center in the News

According to Fil-Am, Dr. Ninez Ponce of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, who has been tracking the progress made in insurance coverage over the last 20 years, there are still healthcare disparities within the AAPI community. "These are the people who are most at risk for being uninsured and for the 18 to 65 group, those that are working. So being healthy is really important. The uninsured rate has gone down dramatically for all races following the pattern of decline... but there's still room for all groups to get coverage," Ponce notes.

Ponce points out, "When you look within the

Dr. Ninez Ponce, director at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, a professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and the Principal Investigator for the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), has been tracking the progress made in health insurance coverage for over two decades. Dr. Ponce spoke about the health insurance and health care disparities in the AANHPI communities.

Two separate studies by UCLA Fielding School of Public Health researchers have been recognized among the top 10 articles in 2021 by the scientific journal Health Affairs.

The two UCLA Fielding School articles are:

“The Effect of the Affordable Care Act on Cancer Detection Among the Near-Elderly” with co-authors including Gerald Kominski, professor emeritus of health policy and management, and Srikanth Kadiyala, a senior economist in the Center for Health Policy Research. In this study, researchers showed that the increase in insurance coverage among adults ages 60–64 due to the Affordable

Nearly 3.2 million Californians, or about 9.5% of the population aged 0 to 64, will be uninsured in 2022, according to a study released last year by the UC Berkeley Labor Center and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Many of those are undocumented workers, a problem Newsom is trying to bridge in his latest proposed budget by expanding Medi-Cal coverage to those income eligible and between ages 26 and and 50, regardless of their immigration status.

"California is a big, diverse place. If you can make it work here, you can make it work anywhere," Jack Needleman, chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health, told ABC News.

In 2017, the state Senate Appropriations Committee estimated that operating a single-payer system would cost $400 billion annually, requiring an additional $200 billion in new taxes to cover the cost. While the prospect of new taxes can be unsettling, California residents already spend $367 billion on health care each year, with taxpayers footing 70% of that, according to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Replacing employer-provided insurance may not be as dramatic a shift to our paychecks or tax filings as some suggest.

While the prospect of new taxes can be unsettling, California residents already spend $367 billion on health care each year, with taxpayers footing 70% of that, according to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Replacing employer-provided insurance may not be as dramatic a shift to our paychecks or tax filings as some suggest.

We are so grateful to the APHA Aging and Public Health Section for renaming the lifetime achievement award in Steve Wallace’s honor,” said Ninez Ponce, professor of health policy and management and director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. “Steve Wallace was a trailblazer, who fought tirelessly for older adults and communities of color … Steve was a remarkable person, who made a difference in the lives of so many people, and his legacy will live on through all of us.

A new study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research examines how the state’s Whole Person Care program, a pilot project launched in 2016 to integrate medical care, mental health services and social supports like housing aid for Medi-Cal beneficiaries from these vulnerable populations, responded to the pandemic’s challenges. In many cases, the findings show, Whole Person Care’s 25 county-based pilot programs were able to successfully pivot in order to continue providing health and social services and enroll participants.

In April of last year, the UC Berkeley Labor Center and UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research released a report estimating that 3.2 million Californians would remain without health coverage in 2022. Separate research from the Public Policy Institute of California found that nearly half that number were immigrants, and of those a significant number were undocumented. Indeed, the Labor Center’s findings suggest that 1.27 million undocumented immigrants in California lack health coverage.