Ninez A. Ponce, MPP, PhD, is Professor in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health’s Department of Health Policy and Management and was Associate Director of UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center (2011-2013). She also devised the rationale and implementation of Asian ethnic oversamples and the cultural and linguistic adaptation of the survey. She teaches courses in applied research methods, health policy and health economics. Her research contributes to the elimination of racial/ethnic and social disparities in health and health care in three areas: multicultural survey research, social penalties in health and health access, and population-based cancer prevention and control studies.

Dr. Ponce is the principal investigator of the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), the largest state health survey in the United States, where she led the first CHIS efforts on the measurement of race/ethnicity, acculturation, physician-patient communication and discrimination. She has received major support from the National Cancer Institute, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the California Endowment, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and other organizations.  Dr. Ponce started and co-chaired AcademyHealth’s Disparities Interest Group.  In 2004, National Cancer Institute’s Special Populations Health Network recognized Dr. Ponce as a rising star in cancer disparities. In 2008, she received a National Institutes of Health merit award for her work in multicultural survey research. In 2009 she was an Institute of Medicine subcommittee member on Race/Ethnicity/Language data. Dr. Ponce has long consulted with community-based organizations such as Community Voices-Oakland/La Clinica de la Raza and Asian Health Services and served as Deputy Director of the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum in San Francisco. In 2009, she received the Royal Morales Community Service award from the UCLA Pilipino Alumni Association. She was Board Chair of New Heights Charter School in South Los Angeles from 2006 to 2012 and currently serves as Vice-Chair on the board of the National Health Law Program.