American Indians and Alaska Natives face unique health challenges, from having among the highest rates of asthma, diabetes, and heart disease to experiencing persistent barriers to health care and insurance. American Indian and Alaska Native people also suffer from a scarcity of resources and data on a broad range of health topics, from obesity to cancer survival to suicide and mental health issues.
In 1998, the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research established an American Indian Research Program, becoming one of the first health policy research programs in the nation to address health disparity issues confronting American Indians and Alaska Natives. Drawing upon staff expertise and partnership with other researchers and tribal and community groups, UCLA CHPR has worked to improve the health of American Indian and Alaska Native populations through native-grounded research and evaluation, as well as through analysis of the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS). CHIS provides the largest population sample of American Indians in any U.S. health survey.
The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research contributes to research on the collection of AIAN population data and how to improve it to better inform legislation and policies that can promote health and prevent disease in the community. For example, in one analysis of eight large health surveys, researchers at UCLA CHPR found that the AIAN population is often unidentified or misidentified, and that the data weighting varied by survey — all which can skew the health needs of the population. Another study specifically analyzed state and federal reporting of race and COVID-19 data on the AIAN population and gave the U.S. overall a rating of D-minus.
A July 2025 policy brief examined variation in psychological distress, life impairment, and unmet needs for care among American Indian and Alaska Native subgroups: those who identify as AIAN-alone (non-Latino), those who identify as both AIAN and Latino, and those who identify as both AIAN and one or more other races. The study found that AIAN-Latino (23%) and AIAN-multiracial (24%) adults were 1.5 times as likely to have experienced serious psychological distress compared to AIAN-alone (15%) adults.
UCLA CHPR archives AIAN publications by its researchers, as well as those of outside scientists who used CHIS and other UCLA CHPR research in their analysis.
