Equity

Program in Health Equity Research Publications

Comparability of Mortality Rates from Health Surveys Linked to National Death Index, 2015 vs 2019: Revised Methods Alter Results for Minoritized and Immigrant Groups

April 23, 2026
A new study led by Dr. Jenny S. Guadamuz, Health Equity Program Director at UC Berkeley’s Center for Health Management and Policy Research (CHAMP), warns that federal data-matching updates are inadvertently masking true mortality rates for marginalized populations. Published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the research reveals that while overall U.S. mortality estimates remained stable after a 2019 National Death Index linkage redesign, tracked mortality rates fell by over 30% for Latinx, Asian, and noncitizen populations. This artificial drop occurred because the new...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749379726001315

Policing and care in mental health crisis response: Boundary work and the politics of safety and authority

March 13, 2026

A new study from CHAMP faculty Mark Fleming, Aoife McDermott and Amanda Brewster offers an in-depth, on-the-ground account of what happens when communities attempt to shift mental health crisis response away from police and toward behavioral health professionals.

The paper, published in Social Science & Medicine, draws on three years of ethnographic fieldwork (2022–2025) to examine the implementation of a large-scale Community Crisis Response Program (CCRP) in a California county. Using interviews with law enforcement leaders, clinicians, emergency medical services...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953626000572?via%3Dih…

Extreme Risk Protection Orders and Firearm and Nonfirearm Suicides in the US

January 2, 2026

A new study published in JAMA and led by CHAMP faculty Timothy Brown finds that Extreme Risk Protection Orders which are commonly known as red flag laws were associated with a substantial reduction in firearm suicides, with no evidence that individuals turned to other methods when firearms were temporarily removed. The findings offer some of the most methodologically rigorous evidence to date that ERPOs function as effective, targeted public health interventions.

Firearm suicide represents a severe and growing public health crisis in the United States. In 2023 alone, firearms...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41615664/

Extreme Risk Protection Orders and Firearm and Nonfirearm Suicides in the US

Timothy Brown
Mark Kaplan
Zhimeng Yan
Yunyu Xiao
2026

Importance: Firearm suicides constitute a crisis in the US, accounting for more than half (55.4%) of all suicide deaths in 2023. Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs; ie, red flag laws) authorize temporary firearm removal from individuals deemed at high risk of harming themselves or others. While ERPOs are designed to reduce firearm-related suicides, whether they result in a net reduction in suicide deaths or shift firearm suicides to suicides by other methods remains an important but unresolved issue in determining their effectiveness.

Objective: ...

Policing and care in mental health crisis response: Boundary work and the politics of safety and authority

Mark Fleming
Dani MacVicar
Aoife McDermott
Amanda Brewster
2026

Demands for alternatives to police responses to mental health crises have driven significant transformations in the frontlines of emergency care. This ethnographic study (2022-2025) analyzes how the boundaries between policing and behavioral health have been negotiated, contested, and reconstructed during the implementation of a large-scale crisis response initiative in California, USA. Taking an ethnographic approach, we demonstrate how boundary work among law enforcement, behavioral health professionals, and organizational leaders unfolds through intertwined dynamics of competition...

Medicaid Expansion for Undocumented Adults and its Association With Health Insurance Coverage Among Noncitizens in California, 2017-2023

Jenny Guadamuz
Stacy Chen
Arturo Bustamente
2026

Abstract

Introduction

California's 4.8 million noncitizen adults, half of whom are undocumented, endure substantial exclusions from health care. To address this gap, California policymakers expanded full-scope, state-funded Medicaid without discriminating by immigration status, first extending coverage to undocumented young adults (18-25 years) in 2020 and then to older adults (≥50 years) in 2022.

Methods

Using the American Community Survey (2017-2023), we assessed whether California's Medicaid expansion for young and older undocumented adults was associated with changes in...

Medicaid Expansion for Undocumented Adults and its Association With Health Insurance Coverage Among Noncitizens in California, 2017-2023

January 29, 2026

A new study lead by CHAMP faculty Jenny Guadamuz along with CHAMP trainee Stacy Chen, finds that California’s expansion of full-scope, state-funded Medicaid to undocumented adults led to modest gains in insurance coverage among older adults, but significant disparities in coverage remain for noncitizens across age groups.

California began expanding Medicaid eligibility regardless of immigration status in 2020 for young adults ages 18–25 and in 2022 for adults age 50 and older. Using nationally representative data from the American Community Survey (2017–2023), the team examined...

Reassessing the Heuristic of the “Healthy Immigrant” in an Era of Turmoil

October 22, 2025

A new editorial published in the American Journal of Public Health by CHAMP Healthy Equity Program Director, Dr. Jenny Guadamuz challenges the oversimplified notion of the "healthy immigrant" and highlights disparities in COVID-19 mortality among undocumented immigrants.

The editorial discusses groundbreaking research showing that during the pandemic, deaths among undocumented immigrants in California increased by 55%, compared with 22% among documented immigrants and just 12% among US-born citizens. Undocumented Latino essential workers experienced a staggering 91% rise in...

Reassessing the Heuristic of the “Healthy Immigrant” in an Era of Turmoil

Jenny Guadamuz
2025

The COVID-19 pandemic, which stands as one of the most significant public health and economic crises of the past century, drew attention to “essential workers” who could not isolate at home, including at least 10 million immigrants without US citizenship.1 Early in the pandemic, essential workers, especially Latinos, were found to be at significantly higher risk of dying than other workers. Given that disproportionate numbers of essential workers and Latino adults are noncitizens, immigration status may be an important but underexamined factor of their heightened mortality risk.

In...

Trends In The Availability Of Buprenorphine At US Retail Pharmacies, 2017–23

Jenny Guadamuz
Sarah Axeen
Dima Qato
2025

From 2017 to 2023, the percentage of US pharmacies regularly dispensing buprenorphine increased from 33 percent to 39 percent. Buprenorphine availability varied substantially across states, counties, and neighborhoods, with pharmacies in low-income, Black, or Latinx neighborhoods persistently less likely to regularly dispense buprenorphine than pharmacies in other neighborhoods.