In fall 2024, Assistant Professor Alicia Riley published a solo-authored article in Social Science and Medicine demonstrating how a single state policy, cigarette taxes, can weaken the educational gradient in mortality by increasing the lifespan for the lowest educated. Her article can inform efforts to modify other long-standing inequities in population health.
Riley is also co-PI of the MRPI-funded Indigenous Health and Social Networks Research Collaborative. This past quarter, Darío Leon, the Institute for Social Transformation research coordinator on the project, hosted the second annual Conectados Convening. The 2-day conference brought Indigenous community leaders from across the state to the UC Santa Cruz campus to discuss the needs of Native American and Indigenous migrant communities in California in the wake of the COVID pandemic.