Joseph Viana, AB

Project Title/Research Interests: Self-Reported Legal Status in the California Health Interview Survey: an Evaluation of Data Quality and Application Towards Adolescent Mental Health

Mentor:
Ninez Ponce, PhD, MPP

Background:
Mr. Viana has a bachelor's degree in psychology from Brandeis University. Prior to entering the doctoral program at UCLA, Joe worked at the Mongan Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital on a study of smoking cessation among hospitalized patients. His personal research on identifying patients who continued to smoke during their stay at a smoke-free hospital won an award from the Society of General Internal Medicine, and the larger clinical trial he coordinated has resulted in a paper recently accepted by JAMA. At UCLA, Mr. Viana has been the Principal Investigator of the first evaluation of the UCLA Healthy Campus Initiative, as well as an analysis exploring walking to school of Californian Latinos. Currently, Joe co-leads an evaluation of an innovative health delivery system of community clinics run through high-need Los Angeles public schools, which aims to describe the services sought and provided, as well as the health and educational outcomes of users vs. non-users. Mr. Viana will be taking his comprehensive examinations in September and is starting work on his dissertation research under the guidance of Dr. Ninez Ponce.  His long-term research agenda is to explore how policies and institutions outside of healthcare impact children's health, with a specific focus on disparities in child health, particularly among children of immigrants.