Center in the News

Dr. Michael Rodriguez and Dr. Ninez Ponce of the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA joined Midday Edition on Tuesday to talk about gun violence as a public health issue. Rodriguez has a good quote "there are more safety policies and regulations around teddy bears than there are for guns and keeping them safe in the home." "We need to look at guns as a consumer product that is dangerous, and when there's access to guns then there's a risk that someone will be injured, if not killed by that gun."

The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research said that for every 1,000 people enrolled in California's Whole Person Care pilot program, there were 45 fewer hospitalizations and 130 fewer ER visits when compared with a similar group of patients who were not in the program.

These statistics were among those presented at "Addressing Gun Violence as a Public Health Epidemic," a symposium held Feb. 13 by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. The half-day virtual symposium featured emerging research on various aspects of gun violence and discussions with leaders from national and local organizations advocating for policy change and public safety.

The California Health Interview Survey has revealed an elevated prevalence of diabetes at 11.5% in the country, above the 10% in the state. Physical inactivity, a contributor of diabetes, is a health issue for almost a third of residents.

“This is a stupid lie that apparently, like a zombie, refuses to die,” Gerald Kominski, a senior fellow and former director at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, wrote in an email. “The most common lie about this fact is that every COVID hospitalization (i.e., including on-Medicare) meant more payment (FALSE) and hospitals only got paid more if the patient died (FALSE)."

Nadereh Pourat, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles' Fielding School of Public Health, noted that insurance companies use financial incentives or penalties to promote important preventive care. Examples she has seen included promoting chlamydia screening or checking for cavities in young children, she said in an email. "The hope is to get providers used to routinely providing evidence-based care," but not to continue providing the incentive forever," Pourat said.

Ninez Ponce and colleagues at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research received $161,000 for a study to address the gap in data for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities through the construction of a new measure to better indicate the needs of the state's NHPI population.

Our study has shed light on the fact that Black men experience a higher death rate after elective surgery than other subgroups of race and sex. Further research is needed to understand better the factors contributing to this observation, and to inform efforts to develop interventions that could effectively eliminate such disparity," Dr. Yusuke Tsugawa, the senior author of the study and associate professor of medicine at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, said in an email.

The study, which was conducted by researchers from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, AAPI Data and researchers at UC Riverside, aimed to dig deeper into the needs and experiences of Asian American and Pacific Islander populations.

These grants build on AAPI Data's initial work to expand the data and research capacity on Asian American and NHPI needs and our collaboration with the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the California Health Interview Survey.