By Vincent Lim
Provost Professor William Vega, executive director of the Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging at the USC School of Social Work, delivered the inaugural lecture for the Immigrant Health Initiative seminar series on Sept. 29 at the Ronald Tutor Campus Center.
Vega is one of the nation’s leading experts on health disparities that affect aging ethnic minority populations and a founding member of the initiative, which received a $25,000 annual grant for up to three years from the USC Collaboration Fund.
Lihua Lui, assistant professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, is spearheading the new initiative to engage faculty and students in an ongoing dialogue about why the positive health characteristics of many immigrants in the United States deteriorate soon after their arrival and what can be done to reverse the trend.
“They’re coming here as fairly healthy people,” Vega said. “When you travel in countries abroad, you will quickly notice that they look different than the American population.”