CALmatters Health Journalist Elizabeth Aguilera

The Strangest, Most Surreal Place Was New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina

Elizabeth Aguilera is an award-winning multimedia journalist who covers health and social services for CALmatters. Previously, she produced stories about community health for Southern California Public Radio/KPCC 89.3, where her reporting revealed lead-tainted soil on school campuses near a former lead battery recycling plant. She was also a reporter at The San Diego Union-Tribune and The Denver Post. Before moderating a Zócalo/The California Wellness Foundation event titled “How Are Immigrants Changing Our Definition of Health?” she spoke in the green room about public housing in Denver, a meal in Sicily, …

April 12, 2019

UCLA Medical Anthropologist Marjorie Kagawa-Singer

The Five Stages of Grief Don’t Always Apply

April 5, 2019

Marjorie Kagawa-Singer is a medical anthropologist at UCLA. In a 45-year career working as a clinician and a researcher, she has focused on reducing health disparities and identifying cultural processes …

The Healthiest Californians Are the Ones Who Are Healthy Together

Immigrants Live Longer and Better Than the Native Born Because Community Heals in Ways Medicine Does Not

by Joe Mathews | February 5, 2019

Immigrants bring cultural practices that could improve our health systems and the health of all Californians—if we do more to understand and deploy the advantages of cultural diversity, said a …

How Mexican Immigrants Changed the Way Americans Grieve

With Sugar Skulls and Altars that Maintain Our Connection to the Dead, Día de los Muertos Is Now a Therapeutic Ritual in All 50 States

by Regina Marchi | February 4, 2019

After decades of avoiding the topic, it has become fashionable for Americans to talk about death.

Death dinners and death cafes offer people space to collectively discuss the physical, psychological, …

Are Immigrants California’s Secret to Healthy Living?

From Sushi to Sriracha to Schwarzenegger, Newcomers Have Redefined the Good Life

by Joe Mathews | February 4, 2019

What makes California the very picture of healthy living? It’s neither sunshine nor silicone implants.

Our health secret is actually immigration.

While the President and others falsely blame immigrants for being sources …

Is Laughter Yoga Really from India?

100 Years Ago, Entrepreneurial Immigrants Sold Spiritual Exercises to Wide-Eyed Americans

by Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan | February 4, 2019

There’s nothing particularly funny about a laughing club, except the premise. I first heard of laughing clubs when they appeared on the American radar about a decade ago. I might …

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