Housing Instability, Evictions, and Population Health Consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Katherine Chen, MD will discuss her research study, “Unmet Medical Needs Among Adults Who Move due to Unaffordable Housing.” Dr. Chen is an internal medicine physician and postdoctoral fellow at UCLA. Her research explores the role of urban planning and public policy in shaping health disparities, focusing on ways to advance health equity through strategies addressing housing, transportation, and neighborhood environments. Recent projects have examined health outcomes among people displaced in California’s affordable housing crisis, the impact of gentrification on hypertension and diabetes control in Los Angeles, transportation access to health care during the COVID-19 pandemic, and nonprofit hospitals’ engagement with local housing needs. Dr. Chen trained at UCLA for her M.D. and her residency in Internal Medicine. After serving as Chief Resident, she joined the National Clinician Scholars Program at UCLA as a postdoctoral fellow. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Health Policy & Management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. She practices primary care and supervises resident physicians at a Federally Qualified Health Center in Los Angeles.

Kathryn Leifheit, PhD MSPH will discuss findings from her research, “Evictions, COVID-19 and mental distress: Quasi-experimental studies of state eviction moratoriums and population health during a pandemic.” Dr. Leifheit is a postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health in the Department of Health Policy and Management. She received her PhD in epidemiology from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in 2020. Her research focuses on social policies as levers to improve population health and promote health equity, with a particular focus on housing policies.