UCLA researchers receive grants to study needs of California’s AANHPI communities

Clockwise from top left: Ninez Ponce, Saba Waheed, Jennifer Wagman and Cindy Sangalang.

By Emily Jo Wharry
Originally published at UCLA Newsroom

Four UCLA research teams were awarded a total of more than $560,000 in grants from the AAPI Data project at UC Riverside. The awards will support social science research on the needs of California’s Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities.


The grants are funded by a $10 million allocation to AAPI Data provided by the California State Legislature in 2021, part of the state’s $166.5 million Asian and Pacific Islander Equity Budget.

The grants were awarded to:

• Saba Waheed and colleagues at the UCLA Labor Center received $149,000 for an in-depth study examining the nail salon industry in California. The project is a collaboration with the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative and Professor Preeti Sharma of Cal State Long Beach.

• Cindy Sangalang of UCLA’s departments of social welfare and Asian American studiesreceived $61,000 for a project examining how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the physical, economic and social well-being of Filipino American workers.

• Ninez Ponce and colleagues at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research received $161,000 for a study to address the gap in data for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities through the construction of a new measure to better indicate the needs of the state’s NHPI population.

• Jennifer Wagman and colleagues at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health’s community health sciences department received $191,000 to assess experiences of COVID-related sexual harassment, violence and anti-Asian racism among Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students throughout the University of California system.