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Dr. Ponce as new Director of the Center for Global and Immigrant Health

|March 12, 2014|

On Wednesday, Dean Jody Heymann of Fielding School of Public Health announced that Dr. Ninez Ponce has agreed to serve as the new Director of the FSPH Center for Global and Immigrant Health, effective July 1, 2014.

"Dr. Ponce, Professor in the Fielding School of Public Health's Department of Health Policy and Management, brings a wealth of experience in immigrant and global health, survey-based research, social determinants of health, and health disparities. Dr. Ponce led pioneering efforts in multicultural survey research, including measures of racial/ethnic identity, acculturation, generational status, and discrimination. At the Center for Health Policy Research, where Dr. Ponce currently serves as principal investigator for the California Health Interview Survey, she devised the rationale and implementation of Asian ethnic oversamples and the cultural and linguistic adaptation of the survey in Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), Korean, Vietnamese, and Tagalog. Dr. Ponce has played an active role in advocating for expanding survey sampling frames to reflect the diverse immigrant population groups in California’s population. Her research has focused on understanding the effects of macroeconomic changes on health and health care access in developing countries, in low-income neighborhoods and among racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. Her research has received major support from the National Institute of Aging, National Cancer Institute, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and other organizations.  Dr. Ponce has served as RAND's resident advisor to the Republic of Macedonia's Ministry of Health and has worked for the World Bank and Catholic Relief Services in Thailand.  She was deputy director of the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum, a national advocacy organization promoting the health of Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities in the U.S. and US territories.

With Dr. Ponce’s leadership, the Center is poised to grow its excellence in training its students in global  and immigrant health, and supporting faculty and student research in global and immigrant health. Established in 2008, the Center for Global and Immigrant Health includes faculty from all of the departments in the Fielding School of Public Health as well as the Schools of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing and the California Center for Population Research. Participating faculty have active research collaborations in more than 60 countries throughout the world, and several work both with immigrant communities in California and in the countries of origin of these communities. 

While global health interest has grown rapidly in the past decade, few centers successfully bridge local and global health. The Center for Global and Immigrant Health is uniquely positioned to excel at this under Dr. Ponce’s leadership with the exceptional expertise of engaged faculty, students and staff."

Congratulations, Dr. Ponce-- we are proud of you!