Health Disparities

Marissa Seamans, PhD, MSPH, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology. Dr. Seamans’ research focuses on the intersection of social epidemiology and pharmacoepidemiology to address substance use and mental health. Her work explores the use of large healthcare databases to examine prescription drug use in families and the effectiveness of treatments for mental health and substance use disorders. Methodologically, Dr.

Dr. Joseph Davey's research focuses on how best to prevent and treat HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in peri-conception, pregnant women and couples, as well as other vulnerable populations. She has expertise in study design and use of epidemiological methods to inform interventions aimed at reducing the burden of HIV and related diseases on women, children, and families.

Dr. Liwei Chen is an Associate Professor (tenured) in the Department of Epidemiology at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.  Dr. Chen’s research mainly focusses on identifying effective lifestyle approaches to prevent/management obesity, diabetes, hypertension and other cardiometabolic diseases.  She is also interested in maternal and child health and the life-course approach of chronic disease epidemiology.  Dr.

Roch Nianogo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. He is a physician and scientist of preventive medicine and epidemiologist. Dr. Nianogo’s research strives to help reduce the burden of preventable chronic diseases, promote the health and wellbeing of patients and populations, especially those most vulnerable, and assist clinical, public health and policy decision-making. To this end, Dr. Nianogo has developed research interests that are both methodological and substantive in nature.

Ilan H. Meyer, Ph.D. is Distinguished Senior Scholar for Public Policy at the Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at UCLA’s School of Law, Adjunct Professor in Community Health Sciences at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, and Professor Emeritus of Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University. Dr. Meyer studies public health issues related to minority health.

Elizabeth Rose Mayeda, PhD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology. Dr. Mayeda's research focuses on how to prevent or delay cognitive aging, Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, stroke, and other health outcomes in older adults. She is especially interested in social inequalities in healthy aging. Much of her current work focuses on identifying the origins of racial/ethnic inequalities in aging. Dr.

Yvonne Flores, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and a research scientist at the Center for Cancer Prevention and Control Research. She is also a member of the UCLA Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Equity and the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Additionally, Dr. Flores is an investigator at the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), where she has led numerous bi-national projects since 2000.

Randall Kuhn (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1999) is a demographer and sociologist who employs a wide array of research methods and data to study the social determinants of health, health program evaluation, and the health-development nexus. He has conducted seminal research on the impacts of migration on health. In Bangladesh, he leads a 35-year evaluation of the effects of randomized child and reproductive health interventions on health and socioeconomic change across generations.

Akihiro Nishi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. He is a social epidemiologist specializing in network sciences and evolutionary game theory (see Nishi, Social Science & Medicine, 2015). His areas of focus include the improvement of economic inequality and the inequality of well-being in online social networks (e.g. Nishi et al, Nature, 2015); examining health consequences of nationwide policies in aging countries such as Japan (e.g.