FSPH's California Health Interview Survey & Professor Ninez Ponce Receives 2019 AcademyHealth Award
AcademyHealth has awarded FSPH’s Professor Ninez Ponce and the California Health Interview Survey, housed at the Fielding School's UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, a 2019 Health Services Research Impact Award. The annual award "recognizes research that has had a significant impact on health and health care."
The California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) is the nation’s largest continuous state-based population health survey, collecting information from approximately 20,000 households annually.
CHIS and the Center for Health Policy Research (CHPR), founded by the late Professor E. Richard Brown, have formed the foundation for trusted yet independent relationships with governments at all levels, legislators, and non-governmental agencies and organizations. CHIS has provided data for analytic models, policy briefs, media releases, and formal and informal briefings. Because of CHIS, reliable information has been collected for nearly two decades from people whose voices would have otherwise not been heard. For example, CHIS collects data in seven languages, and ensures inclusion of historically marginalized populations such as LGBTQ, and recent immigrants. The inclusion of multiple languages and racial/ethnic minority oversamples was a goal of Professor Ninez Ponce’s from the onset of CHIS, and is rooted in her commitment to health equity.
AcademyHealth's annual awards program, which will be held on June 3 in Washington, D.C., "recognizes individuals and projects that have made significant contributions to the fields of health services research and health policy, while supporting AcademyHealth’s mission to improve health and the delivery of health care."
Professor Ninez Ponce – who serves as principal investigator of CHIS, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and a professor in the Fielding School’s Department of Health Policy and Management – will be recognized at the event.
Professor Ponce helped develop the first CHIS in 2001, and has led numerous pioneering efforts in multicultural survey research, including measures of racial/ethnic identity, acculturation, generational status, and discrimination. She has contributed extensively to professional societies and committees focused on racial/ethnic disparities research, such as the National Quality Forum Disparities Standing Committee and the National Academy of Medicine Subcommittee on the Standardized Collection of Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data; and she helped launch the first AcademyHealth Disparities Interest Group.
Professor Ponce holds a bachelor’s degree in science from UC Berkeley, a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in health services from UCLA.