Center in the News

Segment One: Vickie Mays is a professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA and Dr. Ninez Ponce is the principal investigator of a study by UCLA’s Center for Health Policy discuss that study with Hal. The findings show that the mental health of young people- as young as 13- has taken a serious hit since the COVID-19 pandemic. "The news isn't good as far as mental health for youth," Ponce said. This data is actually bringing attention to the problem ... What we're getting from this is the alert. Minority population impact? explain. Vickie Mays: The UCLA CHPR goes out of its way to make sure

Mark Keppler interviews Paulette Cha and Shannon McConville at Public Policy Institute of California about their research report, "Coverage and Care for Undocumented Immigrants: An Update," which uses 2015–2019 CHIS data about undocumented in California. 

"The impact of the pandemic has been especially pronounced for young adults,” Hughes said. “A set of potentially traumatic experiences that occur when we are young may be the root cause of some of the most common, serious and costly health and social challenges facing our state.

When the Affordable Care Act was first implemented, data indicated that Black and Hispanic populations were not enrolling at high rates, in part due to historical distrust of the federal government, according to Nadereh Pourat, the associate director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

24 percent — the share of immigrants living in California who told UCLA researchers they’re “very worried” about falling victim to gun violence. That’s nearly double the rate of the state’s overall population. [California Health Interview Survey]

According to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, 1 in 10 adults in Los Angeles County has type 2 diabetes, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states 11.3 percent of American adults are diabetic. There is a higher percentage of people who are overweight—with a body-mass index between 25 and 29.9—in Los Angeles (35.9 percent than nationally 35.2 percent). Nevertheless, obesity—when the BMI is 30 and higher—is less prevalent in LA County than America as a whole: 23.5 percent to 28.9 percent.

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.”