Public policy students take on a health care digital divide

When Sophia Li decided to apply to graduate school to pursue her interest in health policy, she could not have known that the field would soon be upended by a protracted global health emergency.Along with most of her peers in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs ’ master of public policy program, Li began her studies in September 2020, when COVID-19 had already taken more than 1 million lives worldwide and the arrival of vaccines was still months away.When the time came to embark on the public policy program ’s exacting capstone project, Li chose to focus on an inequity brought into sharp focus by the pandemic: As they isolated in their homes, more people turned to telemedicine for their health care needs — but that option was not available to people who lacked computers, smart phones and internet s ervice.“The pandemic really did shine a light on the possibilities that telemedicine brings,” Li said, “but it also showed that, while the upper half are benefiting from this, what does this mean for the lower half that have these barriers to access?”Li was part of a team that explored this question on behalf of their client, the nonprofit Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles County. On an evening in May, Li and teammates Stacy Songco, who is earning a master of public policy and a doctorate in medicine, Xinyuan Qi, Ziyi Wei and Yixuan Yu boiled down a year ’s worth of policy research and analysis into a 20-minute summary.They were among nearly 70 second...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news