Arturo Vargas Bustamante, PhD, MPP, is a senior fellow and faculty associate at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and an associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. He has a broad background in health policy with specific training and expertise in health care survey research and data analysis, health care cost estimation, economic valuation, and program evaluation. His research investigates unexplored or underexplored topics on access to health care, predominantly among Latinos/Hispanics and immigrants in the United States. He also specializes in the comparative analyses of health care delivery systems in Latin American countries.
His research has been published in reputable health policy journals such as Health Affairs, Health Services Research, Social Science & Medicine, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, among others. The outcomes of his research have had direct policy applications, particularly since they estimate the share of disparities that can be attributed to socioeconomic and demographic factors and the corresponding part associated to health system variables, such as usual source of care and insurance status.
Vargas Bustamante has a PhD in public policy. He also has a master's in public policy and a master's in economics from Berkeley. As part of his professional experience, he worked as a consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank and for the California Program on Access to Care, and worked for the Health Care Financing Administration of the Mexican Ministry of Health.
About a third of Californians live in areas where there is a shortage of primary care providers, according to the California Healthcare Foundation. The shortage is particularly acute in rural areas and in the rapidly growing Inland Empire, which has only about 40 primary care physicians per 100,000 people. For patients, a short supply of doctors can mean months-long waits for appointments and more trips to urgent care for chronic conditions. And for in-demand providers, burnout looms. We’ll learn about plans to address the shortage and hear about your experiences finding a primary care professional.