Research

OUR PROJECTS

BRAIN WASTE 

Education-labor mismatch and health outcomes among immigrants in the US

In the US labor market, foreign-born workers are disproportionately overeducated for their jobs compared to US-born workers, a phenomenon known as education-labor overmatch. While education-labor mismatch shapes the social and economic integration of immigrants, few studies have examined the role of education-labor mismatch on health. Using the Health and Retirement Study, our project examines how education-labor mismatch is related to health. This work advances inquiries of how social environments shape the incorporation and health trajectories of immigrants who play an important role in the US labor market and healthcare landscape.

 

 

 

 

THE WEIGHT OF MIGRATION

Examining the cardiovascular health of Mexicans living in Mexico and the US

In the 1980s, Mexican migration to the US surpassed that of all other countries, and Mexican migrants account for the largest foreign-born group in the US. Since 2010, however, net US-Mexico migration has been negative, with more Mexicans return-migrating than immigrating to the US. While migration to the US plays an influential role in shaping health behaviors and health outcomes among Mexicans, few studies have characterized health among Mexicans remaining in Mexico, return migrants in Mexico, and Mexicans migrants in the US. This project leverages binational data from the US and Mexico to evaluate health across these migrant groups to better understand the role of migration on health in Mexicans.

 

 

 

INCARCERATION NATION

Linking immigration enforcement and incarceration across US counties

The prison-industrial complex in the United States is expansive. The US has the highest per capita incarceration rate globally and operates the largest immigration detention system in the world. While purportedly race-neutral, these incarceration systems disproportionately target Black and Latinx Americans in the US. Our project aims to examine how these racialized systems in the US contribute to entrenched health inequities, including racial inequities in birth outcomes.

 

 

 

 

 

ENDING ENTANGLEMENT 

Evaluating the Impact of Policies that Disrupt the Arrest-to-Deportation Pipeline in New York

Arrest to Deportation Pipeline - California Immigrant Policy Center Entanglement with local law enforcement now fuels our nation’s mass immigration deportation system. Since 2003, ICE began to implement a complex web of cooperation programs that funnel immigrants who come into contact with the criminal justice system into, what has become known as, the arrest-to-deportation pipeline. In response, communities across the US have implemented a variety of “entanglement-blocking policies”, which aim to limit the collusion between local criminal justice systems and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In this project, with Alicia Riley (UCSC) and Mizue Aizeki (Immigrant Defense Project, New York), we will be developing new metrics to understand ending entanglement policies in the NY Metropolitan Area and test if these policies are associated with health, wellbeing, and social integration outcomes among immigrant and coethnic communities.

 

 

 

DULCE PRIMARY CARE INTERVENTION & LATINX FAMILIES   

The role of pediatric primary care innovations in promoting health equity for Latinx families

Ensuring the wellbeing of Latinx children is an essential investment in our nation’s future, yet Latinx children face significant inequities in developmental and health outcomes, beginning as early as infancy. To address these challenges, pediatric primary care innovations which screen vulnerable families for unmet needs and connect families to material and social supports are one promising strategy to address the social and economic hardships faced by many Latinx families. The study explores whether DULCE, a novel pediatric primary care innovation in CA and FL, is associated with Latinx families’ caregiver well-being and child health and development outcomes. We use a mixed-methods study design to evaluate changes in caregiver and child outcomes using longitudinal data and complementing our quantitative findings with qualitative interviews with select DULCE caregivers 

 

 

 

STRUCTURAL RACISM & LATINX HEALTH INEQUITIES

New measures and approaches to understanding the drivers of Latinx health

Latinxs, the largest racial/ethnic group in the US, face pervasive disparities in chronic disease outcomes. While previous work has pointed to behavioral risk factors, such as obesity, physical activity, and diet for the drivers of these disparities, the constellation of this risk factors concentrate in Latinx communities due to structural racism- historical and contemporary policies and practices that foster racial inequality through mutually reinforcing social systems. Yet the mechanisms between racism, behaviors, and health among Latinx are poorly understood. Using novel geospatial methods and emerging conceptual frameworks on structural racism, this project will build new measures of structural racism across communities in the US and apply these measures to population health data of Latinx to understand the structural drivers of health inequities.

 

 

 

THE NEXT COVID ATLAS: EXPLORING RESILIENCY AND ENGAGING COMMUNITIES

Contextualizing COVID across communities and integrating community engagement in the COVID-Atlas 2.0

The US COVID Atlas is a visualization tool led by the Health Regions and Policy lab that  connects COVID case data and community indicators across the United States from its beginning to today. The Atlas helps you access current county-level data and spatial analysis to better understand the spread in communities and to bolster planning efforts. With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the US COVID Atlas team aims to (1) expand Atlas data and research insights to provide a more complete view of the pandemic; (2) develop new resources and services to share Atlas resources; and (3) apply a racial, social, and spatial equity lens throughout Atlas infrastructure in an intentional & meaningful way. Dr Martinez-Cardoso is primarily involved with the community engagement components of Atlas 2.0 and bringing her health equity expertise to bear with the data components of the US COVID Atlas.

 

 

“Immigration” by lcars ; “Mexican American Foods” by Jeremy Brooks; Island of Incarceration by Jason Wong is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0