Center in the News

Anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies are widely known to have harmful impacts on mental health, but a new policy brief from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research revealed large disparities in rates of serious psychological distress across immigrant subgroups in California.

Two California lawmakers publicly blew up at each other earlier this month, hitting a nerve on an issue that has long-divided the state’s elected leaders: Whether and how much to offer government-subsidized health benefits to undocumented residents. Just 20 years ago, “in the early 2000s, the idea of offering this benefit was considered political suicide for both Democrats and Republicans,” said Arturo Vargas Bustamante, faculty research director at the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute.

Nearly two-thirds of Latinx LGBT immigrants without Green Cards live in poverty. Using data from the California Health Interview Survey, researchers examined the demographic, socioeconomic, and health characteristics of Latinx LGBT immigrants. Results show that Latinx LGBT immigrants without Green Cards are older, have less education, and have fewer economic resources than U.S.-born Latinx LGBT people.

California’s population is rapidly aging, and the over-60 population is growing racially and ethnically diverse faster than any other age group. By 2030, it is projected that one in four Californians will be an older adult. CHCF is funding research to understand  ... the experiences and health-related outcomes of older adults and adults with disabilities in California who need home and community-based long-term services to maintain their independence and quality of life (using data from the Long-Term Services and Supports follow-on survey of the California Health Interview Survey).

“Using California survey data, we found that childhood lifetime asthma prevalence varied among Asian American ethnic groups, with the lowest prevalence in Korean American children and the highest prevalence in Filipino American children,” said [Meng] Chen, [MD and clinical assistant professor of allergy and immunology at Stanford University].

The situation worsened after the pandemic: in 2021 the California Health Interview Survey, the state’s largest survey, estimated that 38 percent of young Californians aged 18 to 30 had not had sexual partners in the previous year: a choice, rather than contingency from quarantine, if the following year the percentage stood at 22 percent.

“Using California survey data, we found that childhood lifetime asthma prevalence varied among Asian American ethnic groups, with the lowest prevalence in Korean American children and the highest prevalence in Filipino American children,” Meng Chen, MD, clinical assistant professor of allergy and immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine, told Healio.

The California Department of Health Care Services on Tuesday launched two new health services offering free telehealth to families with children up to age 25. According to the California Health Interview Survey, one of the largest state health surveys in the country, about one-third of California teens experienced serious psychological distress between 2019 and 2021, with a 20% increase in adolescent suicides.

Starting this year, California is extending its public health insurance coverage to undocumented adults between 26 and 49 years old, making the state the first to offer a comprehensive plan to those without legal status ... some researchers believe it will save the state money in the long run. But this all assumes people will sign up, said Nadereh Pourat, who heads the Center for Health Policy Research’s Health Economics and Evaluation Research Program at UCLA.

To little fanfare, as the new year has gotten underway, California has closed one of the largest remaining gaps in its healthcare coverage system. As of January 1, all low-income Californians, no matter their immigration status, no matter their age, qualify for healthcare coverage ... Researchers at UC Berkeley’s Labor Center and UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research estimate that by year’s end the number of working-age Californians without health coverage will have declined to roughly 2.5 million people.