Center in the News

Californians — both teens and adults — have had a hard time throughout the pandemic, according to a recent UCLA California Health Interview Survey. In 2021, almost a third of adults experienced “serious suicide ideation” compared to about 24% in 2019. And about 26% of teens said that they had not received the counseling they needed in the past year.

UCLA’s California Health Interview Survey highlights an “urgent need for mental health services,” according to a press release from UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research. The survey was conducted in 2021.

"Early in the epidemic, a lot of the data did not have a person’s race or ethnicity,” Mays said. “When data is not collected in a systematic way, when people don’t prioritize making sure a record has race included in it, it really slows down the response, particularly in a public health emergency."

"One thing we need to do right away is to target who was experiencing this the worst,” Mays said. “We need to decisions made at the state, the federal level, about what is acceptable quality data, meaning you cannot send a form in if it is missing certain variables.”

“Our findings show that more people are experiencing serious psychological distress, more people are in need of professional help and more people are reporting moderate or severe impairment in their work, social lives, relationships and daily activities,” Ponce said. Also quoted was Todd Hughes, director of the California Health Interview Survey, which conducted the research: “As the largest and most diverse state, California is often looked at as a model that strives toward health equity,” Hughes said. “However, the data show there is still a need to address some of the inequities in

“Our findings show that more people are experiencing serious psychological distress, more people are in need of professional help and more people are reporting moderate or severe impairment in their work, social lives, relationships and daily activities,” Ponce said.

Health disparities in California, including in oral health care, disproportionately affect historically underserved communities due to systemic, social and economic inequities. According to the California Health Interview Survey in 2017-18 from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, 27% of California adults reported their oral health as poor while 21% reported their overall health as poor. Looking deeper, 21% of white adult Californians reported their oral health as poor compared to 30% of Black Californians and 34% of Latinx Californians.

“Our findings show that more people are experiencing serious psychological distress, more people are in need of professional help and more people are reporting moderate or severe impairment in their work, social lives, relationships and daily activities,” Ponce said.

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Fielding School of Public Health researchers have been awarded $3 million to study the sexual and reproductive health of Asian immigrant women in the United States, the university announced on Monday.

“California has some of the toughest gun laws in the country,” said Sean Tan, a senior public administration analyst at the research center. “Yet our findings still suggest there is a need for improvements to our laws given continuing concerns over gun violence in the state.”