Health Equity and Translational Social Science (HETSS) Research Theme

Our Vision

To create Equity-Centered Patient Care models, in concert with research that centers social sciences, humanities, and community collaboration. Existing biomedical care systems do not address social determinants of health. In many cases, they construct structural barriers to health. HETSS exists to transform healthcare knowledge and practice.

Now is the time to shift to a sociomedical paradigm. Here's how we'll get there:

CREATE KNOWLEDGE

Establish social sciences and humanities as essential to the study of health equity, and make equity a focus for all health research at UCLA, across the landscape.

CULTIVATE COLLABORATIONS

Build an engaged community of social scientists, humanities scholars, clinicians, and community partners to produce knowledge about the mechanisms of health equity.

BUILD NEW MODELS

Develop evidence for Equity-Centered Patient Care Models, leveraging the social sciences and community lived experiences to address the social/structural determinants of health.

“As a trauma surgeon, I know that homicide is the number one killer of young black boys and men. Structural racism is the root of the problem. We need to address the social determinants of health in our community by integrating social care into the fabric of our medical system.”

Rochelle Dicker, MD

Full Calendar of Events related to Health Equity & Social Science Medicine

“American medicine spends the most per capita of any nation but has the worst health outcomes in the industrialized world. We can change that by investing in sociomedical sciences.”

Helena Hansen, MD, PhD