Health and diversity in a changing demographic

With large segments of California’s population no longer identifying as one race alone, medical experts are reinventing the old narratives that tended to link diversity and race with health dysfunction.

On May 16, UCSF students are invited to a seminar, co-sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Outreach and UCSF Alumni Relations, entitled, 'California and the Changing US Narrative on Diversity, Race and Health,' where UCLA Professor Dr. David Hayes-Bautista presents theory, method and data from current research that support an emerging alternative narrative on diversity, race and health.

Hayes-Bautista, the Director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, will discuss the current way health is framed within racial minority communities — namely a) that diversity means health disfunction, b) that health social determinants such as race, poverty and low education are obstacles to good health, and c) that racial categories are hard-edged and binary.

Hayes-Bautista suggests that an alternative narrative is emerging in the California experience — with its 62% diverse populations — that challenges the current narrative. The new narrative tells us that a) diversity drives good health outcomes, b) unexplored social determinants can facilitate good health, and c) the Latino fuzzy-edged racial narrative may offer different ways to conceptualize California’s increasingly racially ambiguous population.

Join Hayes-Bautista at Cole Hall from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. as he presents his findings on California and the Changing U.S. Narrative on Diversity, Race and Health. Contact CLCA@ucsf.edu for more details.