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Image of Rocio Perez speaking on zoom for data equity event

Advancing Data Equity for Latino Communities

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In a step towards advancing data equity for underserved communities in California, UCLA LPPI participated in the virtual policy forum early this month, “We Count!: Data Equity for Latinx and Indigenous Communities in California.” Organized by the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California (LCHC), a member of UCLA LPPI’s Ad-Hoc Latino Leaders coalition, the event shed light on the critical importance of data disaggregation and the acknowledgment of racial and ethnic diversity within national and state institutions.

A central part of the conversation was the campaign for California Senate Bill 435 – the Latino and Indigenous Disparities Reduction Act. If adopted, CA SB435 would bolster representation and health equity for Latinx and Indigenous communities. It will mandate the California Department of Public Health and the Department of Social Services to collect and release disaggregated data specifically for Indigenous and Latinx nations. The bill would also require the agency to publish annual reports analyzing health trends, including acute and chronic diseases, as well as accessibility and utilization of vital services.

Latina leaders like Dr. Seciah Aquino, Executive Director of LCHC, CA Senator Lena Gonzalez, and UCLA LPPI Fellow, Rocio Perez, are raising the urgency and visibility of this issue. Sen. Gonzalez, the sponsor of CA SB435, has emphasized the need to view Latinos from diverse perspectives to ensure improved health outcomes. At the forum, Perez recommitted UCLA LPPI’s support for the campaign. “UCLA LPPI is proud to be part of this statewide effort to ensure comprehensive data collection that encompasses all intersecting identities and communities within the Latino community,” shared Perez, one of the developers of the forthcoming Latino Data Hub. During the event, Perez also stressed the need to address the limitations posed by current data standards set by state agencies. The lack of quality and reliable information hampers efforts to include indigenous Mesoamerican nations in the database, limiting the ability to address their specific needs effectively.

The collection of this data is crucial for the Latino community in California and across the United States. It allows for a more accurate and nuanced understanding of the unique challenges and disparities of different subgroups within the larger Latino population. The information also allows researchers and policymakers to identify disparities that may not be apparent when examining data for the Latino community as a whole. This makes it invaluable for crafting targeted and effective policies to address the specific needs of our diverse communities.

Understanding the critical nature of the issue and in an effort to bridge the data gap, UCLA LPPI is developing the Latino Data Hub (LDH). Set to go live in Fall 2023, LDH will be an accessible, user-friendly, and bilingual online resource. This new initiative will provide comprehensive data on critical issues like education, healthcare, employment, and housing, to empower advocacy efforts and inform legislation.

The LCHC panel underscored the importance of creating tools like LDH. Fact-based insights from the new data hub will allow policymakers to be better equipped to make informed decisions that address the nuances and needs of their Latino constituencies.

You can watch the entire virtual policy forum above.

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Josefina Flores Morales PhD

UCLA LPPI Centers Latinas in the Struggle for Reproductive Freedoms

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UCLA LPPI Centers Latinas in the Struggle for Reproductive Freedoms Following the Overturning of Roe v. Wade

By Alise Brillault

The UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute (UCLA LPPI) elevates research that applies a Latina lens on emerging political issues and aims to be nimble in responding to the evolving needs of the nation’s growing and diverse Latino community. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and recent attacks on reproductive freedoms, UCLA LPPI brought together its research, mobilization and leadership capacities to advocate for a Latina-centered response.

UCLA LPPI recognizes that America’s future is Latina. By 2050, Latinas will represent 13% of the U.S. population, 11% of the labor force and have a median age 11 years younger than non-Hispanic white women. Yet too often, Latinas are left out of policy conversations, and they experience significant inequity that places them among our nation’s most vulnerable.

Throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, UCLA LPPI has conducted rigorous research to put a spotlight on the challenges Latinas have faced – including exiting the workforce at higher rates than any other group and struggling to keep their businesses afloat as entrepreneurs in sectors like hospitality.

These challenges have now been compounded by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. By ending federal protections for abortion rights, Latinas have not only been deprived of their bodily autonomy – their economic security and ability to make choices about their lives is also undermined.

In response, UCLA LPPI has supported emerging Latina scholars through its policy fellowship program to pursue new research to help quantify the impacts of the Dobbs decision on Latinas. That investigation was recently published in UCLA LPPI’s newest report, “Differential Rights: How Abortion Bans Impact Latinas in Their Childbearing Years.”

Josefina Flores Morales PhD

Josefina Flores Morales, PhD

The policy fellows leading this important research initiative included Josefina Flores Morales, who recently completed her PhD in sociology from UCLA, and Julia Hernandez Nierenberg, a master of social work and master of public policy candidate at UCLA.

“UCLA LPPI is committed to creating pathways for rising scholars to publish applied research and inform policy,” explained the organization’s research director, Silvia González. “It was an incredible opportunity to support Josefina and Julia as they led this project and defined the analytical approach, conducted the research and proposed thoughtful policy recommendations.”

The report was also an opportunity for Flores Morales and Hernandez Nierenberg to receive guidance from UCLA LPPI’s partners at Arizona State University’s Center for Latinas/os and American Politics Research (ASU CLAPR). In addition to obtaining data insights and research support from ASU CLAPR’s Dr. Francisco Pedraza, the report was reviewed by Dr. Rocío R. García and Dr. Kenicia Wright, two women of color faculty members at ASU.

“We were able to work with external reviewers at ASU to get an expert perspective outside of UCLA LPPI that gave us insights from people who have been doing gender, policy and reproductive rights work for many years,” Flores Morales said.

“This was my first time working on a report with external reviewers, and collaborating with Dr. Rocio Garcia and Dr. Kenicia Wright was an honor and privilege,” Hernandez Nierenberg added. “They were both excited and supportive of this project and provided thoughtful feedback for Josefina and me.”

UCLA LPPI has also mobilized community members through expert convenings featuring perspectives from Latina leaders in the reproductive justice space. On August 31st, UCLA LPPI Executive Director Sonja Diaz led a national webinar alongside moderator Astrid Galván of Axios and panelists Olivia Julianna from Gen-Z for Change; Lupe Rodríguez from the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice; América Ramírez of the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity Reproductive Rights; and Cathy Torres of Frontera Fund.

This webinar event brought together Latina leaders at the forefront of the reproductive justice movement to discuss the impacts of the Dobbs decision on Latinas’ bodily autonomy, economic wellbeing and political inclusion in American democracy. During this event, participants discussed a meaningful path forward that centers Latinas, from state level protections and abortion fund networks, to comprehensive federal legislation that secures abortion care and reproductive freedoms.

Image: UCLA LPPI Webinar: Latinas in the Fight for Reproductive Rights

UCLA LPPI Webinar: Latinas in the Fight for Reproductive Rights. From top left, Olivia Julianna, Astrid Galván, Lupe Rodríguez, Cathay Torres, and América Ramírez

“The webinar helped to ground our research in some of the tangible, urgent issues facing Latina access to abortion,” said Hernandez Nierenberg.  “Listening to community groups and on-the-ground partners allowed us to formulate a comprehensive list of policy implications based on our research and these conversations, such as enshrining the right to abortion in state constitutions, increasing funding for community-based clinics and hospitals, and protecting transgender and non-binary persons’ reproductive rights.”

Collaborating on this response to the Dobbs decision was a powerful experience for Flores Morales and Hernandez Nierenberg, who will bring this with them in their future academic and professional endeavors.

Flores Morales, who will be pursuing her postdoc at Stanford’s School of Medicine focusing on epidemiology and population health, said, “Julia was a thought partner through and through, and I’m so glad that we were able to work together to create this report. The team at UCLA LPPI was both cheering us on and also providing really important and critical feedback at each step of the way. So it was really a team effort, and I hope that the report reaches a wide audience and continues these critical conversations.”

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The Role of Hispanic Serving Institutions in Preparing the Leaders of Tomorrow

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(From left) Dr. Rosita Ramirez of NALEO, Dr. Angel Molina of ASU CLAPR, Supervisor Nora Vargas and Juana Sánchez of UCLA LPPI at the HACU Annual Conference

(From left) Dr. Rosita Ramirez of NALEO, Dr. Angel Molina of ASU CLAPR, Supervisor Nora Vargas and Juana Sánchez of UCLA LPPI at the HACU Annual Conference

The Role of Hispanic Serving Institutions in Preparing the Leaders of Tomorrow

By Alise Brillault

As one of the youngest and fastest-growing demographic groups in the United States, Latinos are key to the future success of our nation and represent the leaders of today and tomorrow. The 2022 midterm elections saw a record number of Latinos elected to Congress, including the country’s first Gen-Z congressperson. Likewise, young Latinos are increasingly shaping election outcomes, driving record turnout around the salient issues that matter most to them. To truly harness the power of this next generation of changemakers, however, Latinos must have access to the high-quality postsecondary education necessary to bolster their full civic and economic participation.

Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), which are federally designated as having at least 25% Latino/Hispanic undergraduate student enrollment, are essential in preparing the future leadership of this country. UCLA is striving towards achieving HSI status, backed by the support of on-campus units like the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute (UCLA LPPI).

As such, UCLA LPPI’s director of programs, Juana Hernandez Sánchez, led a panel at last month’s Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) conference. Held from October 28-30 in San Diego, the conference drew education administrators, government agency staff, corporate leaders and community partners interested in supporting Latino university students through HSI status and beyond.

In her panel, Sánchez was joined by San Diego County Supervisor Nora Vargas as well as UCLA LPPI partners Dr. Angel Molina from the Center for Latina/os and American Politics Research at Arizona State University (ASU CLAPR) and Dr. Rosita Ramirez of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO). Their discussion centered on the role that Hispanic Serving Research Institutions (HSRIs) play in leveraging rigorous research to inform live public policy debates that impact economic mobility, educational opportunity and quality of life for Latino communities in the U.S. In particular, Sánchez and Dr. Molina discussed how their respective research centers are working to advance equitable, data-informed policymaking and governance while training and supporting Latino students.

“Through our Policy Fellowship at UCLA LPPI, we are contributing to campus-wide efforts to train undergraduates in research, strengthen the graduate education pipeline and promote the retention and success of our Latinx graduate students,” Sánchez explained.

“The research is clear that with more education, individuals experience higher earnings, better quality jobs, higher rates of civic participation and other positive life outcomes,” she elaborated. “Thus, obtaining a postsecondary education is not only vital for individuals’ upward socioeconomic mobility and for U.S. economic prosperity, but also to increase civic participation levels and strengthen our democracy.”

While Latino undergraduates overwhelmingly tend to enroll in HSIs in pursuit of this educational training, Dr. Molina emphasized the need to go beyond enrollment counts to support historically excluded students.

“In order to better prepare the Latino students who will make up the future electorate, public servants and policymakers, HSIs really need to focus on the ‘S’ (‘Serving’) in ‘HSI,’” Dr. Molina said. “For places like ASU, which is a relatively new HSI, and UCLA, which aspires to become an HSI, HACU was a great opportunity for us to learn from the universities who have been doing this work for a long time. They were able to share their insights about what it means to serve students and how they are innovating as the demographic itself is changing.”

Nationally, there are just 21 Hispanic Serving Research Institutes. As one of the highest-ranked research universities in the world, UCLA has the opportunity to orient its teaching and research agendas to better serve Latino communities and learn from peer institutions like ASU. Providing Latino students with access to high-quality research education that explicitly serves their needs will help prepare them to tackle the challenges of today and tomorrow. The future prosperity of our nation depends on it.

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UCLA LATINO POLICY AND POLITICS INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES INAUGURAL LATINO APPLIED POLICY RESEARCH AWARDS

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Photo Credit: PeopleImages

By Jose Garcia, Policy Fellow at the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute

This spring, the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute (UCLA LPPI) awarded its inaugural round of applied policy research grants to six teams of Latino scholars around the nation. Funding will enable research to directly inform public policy and support the training of future Latino academics. The research projects cover topics from Latino homelessness to the impact of public art on policy to the relationship between immigration and educational equity.

Health Science Specialist Melissa Chinchilla of Veteran Affairs Greater Los Angeles leads one team along with Deyanira Nevarez Martinez, an assistant professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Michigan State University. Their all-Latina team is examining new methodologies to estimate the homeless population in Los Angeles that can better account for the unique ways in which Latinos often experience homelessness, such as individuals doubling up in homes. The study will also assess how definitions of homelessness and requirements for documentation affect access to housing subsidies.

The “Latino paradox,” a phrase used to describe the phenomena of Latinos having high poverty rates but not showing up at the expected rate within homeless count numbers given their poverty rate, drives their research. The typical explanation is that Latinos are less likely to be identified as unhoused because they are more likely to use their social network and informal support systems to avoid entering formal homeless service systems.

To address this paradox, Chinchilla and Martinez are hoping to create alternative measures for homelessness by examining rates of shared homes due to loss of housing or economic hardship as well as overcrowded housing. These measures can ensure that government programs and services reach Latinos facing housing instability.

“This project will help expand the work around Latino homelessness,” said Chinchilla. “We don’t have a lot of people locally or nationally doing this work, so we’re trying to build a research agenda around Latino homelessness and be present at more policy tables focused on racial and ethnic disparities within unhoused populations.”

However, expanding the scope of research from Latino academics across the country is only one purpose of this funding. The funding from UCLA LPPI also provides a fertile training ground for the next generation of Latino scholars. Each research project has undergraduate or graduate research assistants like Alisson Ramos, a senior at UCLA studying Political Science. She is working alongside Efrén Pérez, a Professor of Political Science and Psychology at UCLA, to analyze the role of solidarity between communities of color in electoral politics.

“Previously, we’ve only measured attitudes, but with this grant, we’re hoping to analyze how the solidarity between people of color can influence political behavior,” said Ramos. “This grant allows me to utilize the research skills I’ve gained to hopefully flesh out this research project into a Ph.D. dissertation and create a pathway to become a professor and support other students like me.”

UCLA LPPI has a clear remit to develop the next generation of academics and leaders and sees the applied policy award grants as an integral investment in our collective future.

“With these grants, we are not only helping to develop the next generation of researchers,” said Sonja Diaz, UCLA LPPI’s founding director. “We are continuing to push the value of applied research as a road to impactful strategies that can drive highly targeted policy and real-time impact that creates increased and sustained opportunity for Latino communities.”

The UCLA Latino Politics & Policy Institute is providing these grants through generous ongoing annual state funding by the California State Legislature to conduct research and develop policy solutions to address inequities that disproportionately impact Latinos and other communities of color.

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LPPI Presents “In Conversation: An Interview With Weingart Foundation CEO Miguel Santana”

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By Alise Brillault, Latino Policy & Politics Initiative Communications Manager

As the nation has grappled with the health and economic outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic, an election marked by profound political polarization and a reckoning on race, the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative (UCLA LPPI) has been at the forefront of putting a bright spotlight on how these issues have impacted Latino communities in California and across the nation. As part of that effort, UCLA LPPI has highlighted unique perspectives aimed at identifying challenges, opportunities and solutions to move the work forward and create a future where everyone can thrive. These perspectives have included those of academics, labor leaders and elected officials, just to name a few. Recently, UCLA LPPI had the opportunity to hear from the philanthropy world when they sat down with Weingart Foundation* CEO and former UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Board Member Miguel Santana. During the conversation, Santana shared the importance of funding data-driven, Latino-led organizations to build a more inclusive economy and democracy. Check out the conversation (lightly edited for clarity) below.

*UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative (UCLA LPPI) recently received $125,000 in general funding over two years from the Weingart Foundation.

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Alise Brillault: The Weingart Foundation’s main areas of focus are housing justice, immigrant and refugee rights and strengthening nonprofit effectiveness to build towards racial and socioeconomic justice. How does the work of UCLA LPPI as as a Latino-focused research center fit into the foundation’s mission?

Miguel Santana: The Weingart Foundation is committed to advancing social and racial justice in Southern California. For us, it is important that any work to deal with inequities in Los Angeles be based on data, analysis and best practices. The Luskin School of Public Affairs and UCLA LPPI are leading that effort.

We believe that to make change, there has to be an organized community on the ground – but there also need to be academic partners committed to advancing these issues using data analysis and research. Funding initiatives such as UCLA LPPI is part of a larger strategy to harness the power of data to make change in our communities.

AB: Why is it important to invest in Latino-led organizations such as UCLA LPPI?

MS: We strongly believe in supporting organizations led by the very communities that have been marginalized. Although Latinos make up about 50% of Southern California’s population, unfortunately, they are disproportionately reflected in poor outcomes in education, economic prosperity, home ownership, food security, and so many other issues. In short, the Latino community is not benefiting from the thriving economy of Southern California. We believe strongly that these issues have to be grounded in communities they are about. Supporting initiatives such as UCLA LPPI – whose research is being led by the best and brightest of the Latino community – is an important part of that mission.

AB: Can you tell us more about the Unrestricted Operating Support program that Weingart uses to enhance nonprofit effectiveness?

MS: We believe in nonprofit organizations – particularly those already meeting existing gaps due to systemic failures in the community. That’s why we work hard not to be prescriptive and to support organizations based on the idea that they know best how to use their dollars. Most of us at the Weingart Foundation came from the nonprofit world, so it’s important for us to take that experience and remind ourselves of what it was like to work in that space, which makes us very intentional about how to provide the best support necessary.

AB: Only 1% of philanthropic foundation CEOs are Latino, and Latino-focused organizations receive less than 2% of philanthropic funding. Is there a connection between representation at the top of foundations and the type of organizations that receive funding?

MS: For foundations like ours, it’s important that the organizations we fund look like and are led by the communities we support. Our Board of Directors has been very committed to leading on that effort. If we expect our funding recipients to have diversity in their boards and executive leadership, our board thought it was important that our foundation also look like and come from the community we serve to better represent the community’s perspective.

I’m very honored to serve as CEO of the Weingart Foundation. I’ve been in public service my entire career and have been the leader of nonprofit organizations. Frankly, though, my own lived experience growing up in Southeast Los Angeles County as the son of immigrants and the first in my family to go to college is more relevant than my degrees. Foundations committed to racial justice need to look like communities they serve. For me, I live in and work in the community, and it’s an honor to lead a foundation that is truly committed to racial justice.

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Founded in December 2017, through a partnership between the Luskin School of Public Affairs and Division of Social Sciences, the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative addresses the most critical domestic policy challenges facing Latinos and other communities of color in order to expand genuine opportunity for all Americans. UCLA LPPI believes that there is no American agenda without a Latino agenda. Funding from the Weingart Foundation will allow UCLA LPPI to expand its capacities for research, data collection, advocacy and leadership development activities as well as the growth of its staff.

 

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