Josefina Flores Morales is a doctoral candidate in the sociology department at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her areas of expertise in sociology are social demography, immigration, and race/ethnicity. Josefina’s research is about how immigration status influences the socioeconomic and health status of individuals across their life course. Josefina is curious about the implications of different immigration statuses in older-age. Josefina is in the inaugural cohort of the Health Policy Research Scholars program, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This program includes training in health policy, leadership, and communication to promote a culture of health. As a part of this program, Josefina has taken coursework from health policy experts and faculty at George Washington University and Johns Hopkins University. Josefina is committed to creating research that is relevant for local, state, and national policies. Josefina earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology with a public health minor from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2016. During her college years, Josefina advocated for increased college access of undocumented students, volunteered with immigrant youth high school students, worked as a citizenship class teacher at the non- profit Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, and interned at the Children’s Institute. Josefina was also a research assistant for the Institute for Immigration, Globalization and Education, and the UCLA Center for Mental Health in Schools. Her work has been published in Social Science Research, Latino Studies, among other outlets.
