How public health research can shape inclusive immigration policies

President Joseph Biden and the Democrat-controlled Congress have started boldly with immigration. On Feb. 18, Democrats introduced the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, which would rollback many of Donald Trump ’s policies and bring comprehensive immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 10.5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. Researchers and community advocates are recognizing a renewed opportunity to use public health research and advocacy lenses to inf orm the dialogue — and ultimately the policies — surrounding immigration reform.In this Q&A,Steven Wallace, associate director at the  UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and a professor of community health sciences at the Fielding School of Public Health, and his colleagueMaria-Elena Young, a faculty associate at the center and assistant professor of public health at UC Merced, shared their recommendations to promote inclusive policies influenced by the public health mission to ensure the health and well-being of all people.Wallace ’s interest in immigration comes from listening to his grandfather’s stories about coming to the U.S. through Ellis Island, and his father’s memories of growing up in the immigrant neighborhood of Boyle Heights. An undergraduate summer internship in 1977 at a community health center where most of the patients were recent immigrants from Mexico sparked his interest in a more academic study of immigration, and since the mid-1980s h...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news