What's a Chicano Like Me Doing in Public Health Anyway?

The policy response to COVID19 has made public health regulations and resistance ‘go viral,’ while obscuring the kinds of policy and community work public health workers and their stake holding communities have advocated for decades, if not centuries. COVID19 policy responses have built on the legal and economic structures that disproportionately force Latinx communities into the essential workforce and disproportionately exclude them from federal benefits and safety nets. Considering this conundrum, Dr. Jason Daniel-Ulloa teases out unhelpful exclusions and complications that follow from a general understanding that “in Latino and Latinx communities, we have been defined by our labor in this country.”  As a community organizer, Professor Jason Dean-Ulloa witnessed this process as he began his public health career in greater San Diego, the region where he grew up. His emphasis in Health Behavioral Sciences revolved around collaborative research, figuring out with people in communities what the best interventions might be to change the health conditions that shaped chronic illness, STDs, and workplace health matters. He is currently interested in finding ways to use history to guide more effective structural interventions into Latinx and other minoritized communities. The appearance of COVID19 has vastly expanded public awareness of and public hostility to health equity policies, those that use employment status or risk mitigation to defend the health status of minority communities.

Jason Daniel-Ulloa earned an MPH in Health Promotion and a PhD in Health Behavior Science at San Diego State University. Then as a postdoc with UNC Chapel Hill, Wake Forest University and then the University of Iowa, he trained to apply principles of CBPR into research and practice with rural Latinx. He started teaching at San Diego Mesa College and San Diego State University as a PhD student and has since taught at University of Iowa in the College of Public Health and the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies and recently at UW for Health Services (Seattle) and Education (Tacoma).

Dr. Daniel-Ulloa has a broad range of research and public health interests, all guided by the principles of community-based participatory research and focused on Latino communities. He has worked with HPV vaccination campaigns in rural Latino communities, including developing collaborations between clinics, public health, and community organizations. In addition, Dr. Daniel-Ulloa, conducts research around Latino men’s health, especially in developing community organizations to address priorities in the community. The third line of work involves working with Latino college men to develop healthy masculinity and decrease gender-based violence.

Jason’s scholarship applies principles of CBPR and social justice, especially as they apply to the study of health in Latinx peoples. His current focus is on the health and well-being of Latino men, ways in which concepts of masculinity, class and race promote and impede health individually and collectively. He has experience applying both qualitative and quantitative methods to these issues. He also has experience working in HIV and STI prevention, cancer prevention, physical activity promotion and exploring issues in reproductive health and patterns of alcohol and other drugs use and abuse.