Housing, Opportunity and Place (HOPe) Lab

Educational Trajectories and Health

This is a National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded study investigating education trajectories, the paths people take to complete their education, how it differs by sex, race/ethnicity, and family circumstances, and what the effect of different trajectories is on health outcomes. This study is conducted using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The NLSY97 is a vital source of information for policy makers and researchers who want to know more about the experiences and concerns of people in your generation. The survey includes people who were born in the years 1980 to 1984 and living in the U.S. when the survey began in 1997.

Example publications:

Ryan, S., Ream, R. K., Martin, M., Shim, J. K., Shim, J. K., & Yen, I. H. (2023). Adverse childhood experiences and the process(es) of frequent K-12 student mobility in urban contexts. Education and Urban Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/00131245231193406

Yen, I. H., Bennett, A., Allen, S., Vable, A. M., Long, L., Brooks, M., et al. (2023). Childhood residential mobility and mental and physical health in later life: Findings from the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) Study. Journal of Applied Gerontology. https://doi.org/10.1177/07334648231163053

Duarte, C. dP., Wannier, S. R., Cohen, A. K., Glymour, M. M., Ream, R. K., Yen, I. H., & Vable, A. M. (2022). Lifecourse educational trajectories and hypertension in midlife: An application of sequence analysis. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci: Series A, 77(2), 383-391. https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glab249

Mackie, J. F., Shim, J. K., Duarte, C. d P., Ream, R. K., & Yen, I. (2022). ’I’ll take a year off and look what happened’: how family caregiving responsibilities influence educational trajectories in the United States. American Journal of Qualitative Research, 6(3), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.29333/ajqr/12438

Vable, A. M., Duarte, C. dP., Wannier, S. R., Chan-Golston, A. M., Cohen, A. K., Glymour, M. M., Ream, R. K., & Yen, I. H. (2021). Understanding the benefits of different types and timing of education for mental health: A sequence analysis approach. J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci: Series B, gbab147. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbab147

Cohen, A. K., Nussbaum, J., Weintraub, M. L. R., Nichols, C. R., & Yen, I. H. (2020). Association of Adult Depression With Educational Attainment, Aspirations, and Expectations. Preventing Chronic Disease, 17. https://doi.org/10.5888/pcd17.200098

Vable, A. M., Duarte, C. dP, Cohen, A. K., Glymour, M., Ream, R. K., & Yen, I. H. (2020). Does the type and timing of educational attainment influence physical health? A novel application of sequence analysis. American Journal of Epidemiology, 189(11), 1389-1401

Vable, A. M., Cohen, A. K., Leonard, S. A., Glymour, M., Duarte, C. d.P., & Yen, I. H. (2018). Do the health benefits of education vary by sociodemographic subgroup? Differential returns to education and implications for health inequities. Annals of Epidemiology, 28(11), 759-766

Fresno County Housing and Health

Fresno County Housing and Health is a community-based participatory action research project that engages and encourages public housing residents to become drivers of the project. With the collaboration of Faith in the Valley, Fresno (FIV), and funding support from Sierra Health and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, this project seeks to re-imagine how research is conducted in what today is called the California San Joaquin Valley (SJV). Residents in the SJV have been researched to death, meaning that information and data about their everyday lives and struggles have been extracted by institutions of higher education, research organizations, and non-profits without providing residents with avenues to lead or evaluate the research process, question or provide input on research findings, and vocalize the community’s priorities. Given this history, the HOPe Lab and FIV are committed to re-imagining the traditional top-down approach of research and co-developing a path that centers community. Part of this vision includes 1-on-1 conversations with public housing residents, 1-on-1 conversations with field experts, encouraging the development of resident lead local organizing committees, and co-development of curriculum on housing justice and community organizing.

Healthy Communities through Housing Justice

HOPe Lab is a participating team in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded project, "Healthy Communities through Housing Justice: Combatting Racialized Health Inequities through Community-Driven Housing Interventions." This project includes some of Fresno Housing and Health work described above. We are also partnering with Cultiva La Salud (http://www.cultivalasalud.org/) in Merced. This work is identifying policy options to increase access to stable housing.

Information for tenants in California:

Información en español para inquilinos en California:

Example publication:

Martinez, R. L., Frausto, D., Zavala-Sandoval, J., Serna, A., Corchado, C. G., Alvarado, A., Nkosi, J., & Yen, I. (2024). Community-Led Solutions: How Local Organizing Committees Drive Change for Housing and Health Equity in California’s Central Valley. Journal of Participatory Research Methods, 5(2). https://doi.org/10.35844/001c.120257

HEAR and CHANT

Health Effects After Renovation (HEAR) and Community Health After Neighborhood Transformation (CHANT) are Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded projects. CHANT deploys a mixed-methods approach to examine the health and social effects of HOPE SF, a public-private housing policy initiative designed to rebuild and redesign public housing developments into mixed-income neighborhoods in San Francisco. The CHANT research team aims to understand how these significant changes impact residents’ experiences and health outcomes. The HEAR study is a community-engaged inquiry into the health and social impacts of the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program implementation in San Francisco.

Example publications:

Dubbin, L., & Yen, I. H. (2023). Renovating space to age in place: Experiences of elderly residents living through public housing renovations and reflections from affordable housing developers. Journal of Aging and Environment, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/26892618.2023.2280961

Headen, I. E., Dubbin, L., Canchola, A. J., Kersten, E., & Yen, I. H. (2022). Health care utilization among women of reproductive age living in public housing: Associations across six public housing sites in San Francisco. Preventive Medicine Reports, 27, 101797. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmedr.2022.101797

Dubbin, L., Neufeld, S., Kersten, E., & Yen, I. H. (2019). Health Effects After Renovation (HEAR) study: Community-engaged inquiry into the health and social impacts of the Rental Assistance Demonstration Program implementation in San Francisco. Housing Policy Debate, 29(3), 432-439. https://doi.org/10.1080/10511482.2018.1530273

Video on San Francisco Public Housing: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nJ2WEPyFiQQNtklJN6MyVp2btsoJzCPB/view

Nicotine and Cannabis Policy Center

The NCPC is funded by the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP). The mission of Nicotine and Cannabis Policy Center (NCPC) is to gather, understand and promote the thoughts and feelings of rural California residents on current tobacco and cannabis policy. This will be done via large scale surveys across 11 counties of the San Joaquin Valley and adjoining mountains. The results will then be used to develop achievable policy recommendations that work towards reducing tobacco-related diseases and deaths in this overlooked and underserved region of California. Dr. Yen is working as the lead of the training core aiming to address the gaps in nicotine and cannabis control efforts.

Nicotine and Cannabis Policy Center Gets $3.9 Million Extension | Newsroom (ucmerced.edu)

Strengthening Policy and Translational Research to Advance Health Equity in California

Strategies to bridge the gap between research evidence and policy can help to address health inequities in California. This project catalyzes a new multicampus collaboration across four UC campuses (UC Irvine, UC Berkeley, UC Merced, and UC Riverside) to strengthen and expand health equity and policy research capacity. This three-year initiative will have short-term and intermediate impacts by producing policy-relevant products and scientific articles to advance the translation of research evidence into policy. The California Initiative for Health Equity and Action (Cal-IHEA), a UC faculty-led effort housed at UC Berkeley to promote health equity through state policy change, will serve as the lead organization. We will examine how research evidence is used and integrated into state and local policy and identify the extent to which health equity values and concerns are reflected. Next, we will collaborate with two equity-focused community partners in Merced and Riverside Counties to carry out community-engaged research projects to promote local policy change and improve regional health. In our lab, two undergraduate research assistants are working with the lead investigator, Dr. Denise Payán, on this initiative. Click here to read more about the HOPe lab's collaboration on this project.