Ninez A. Ponce

Ninez A. Ponce

Ninez A. Ponce, MPP, PhD, is professor in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, and principal investigator for the California Health Interview Survey. At UCLA she has taught courses in health economics, health policy analysis, global health, and advanced research methods. Her research contributes to the elimination of racial/ethnic/social disparities in health. Ponce is on the Board of Scientific Counselors, National Center for Health Statistics. She has served on committees for the National Academy of Sciences and the National Quality Forum, where her expertise has focused on setting guidance for health systems in the measurement and use of social determinants of health as tools to monitor health equity. She has received numerous awards from community organizations recognizing her work in community-engaged research. In 2019, Ponce and her team received the AcademyHealth Impact award for their contributions to population health measurement to inform public policies. Ponce will serve on the Board of Directors at AcademyHealth from 2021 to 2023. Her portfolio includes a mixture of scholarly work and real-time knowledge diffusion studies, with over 100 peer-reviewed publications, over 60 policy reports, and various creative data access tools to democratize health data. Her articles have been one of the most downloaded papers in Health Services Research and selected as top ten editor’s pick for Health Affairs.