Ninez Ponce

Ninez Ponce is the director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and principal investigator for the center’s California Health Interview Survey. She is also a professor of health policy and management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Her research focuses on racial and ethnic health disparities, health care access and immigrant health.

Ponce helped develop the first California Health Interview Survey, in 2001, and has led numerous pioneering efforts in multicultural survey research, including the development of measures of racial and ethnic identity, acculturation, generational status, and discrimination. She was deputy director of the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum, a national advocacy organization promoting the health of Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities in the United States and U.S. territories.

She currently serves on the One Nation Commission, which is focused on mitigating the current federal “public charge” legislation that makes immigrants who receive public benefits ineligible for visas and green cards. 

Ponce has contributed extensively to professional societies and committees focused on racial and ethnic disparities research, including the National Academy of Medicine's Subcommittee on the Standardized Collection of Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data. She also serves on the multicultural external advisory council of the Nielsen Corp., an information, data and measurement company.