Brown Bag Seminar: Latinx Health Paradoxes, Resilience, and the Pursuit of Health Equity




Event Details

  • Date:
  • Venue: Zoom

“Latinx Health Paradoxes, Resilience, and the Pursuit of Health Equity” presented by John Ruiz, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona.

Despite disproportionate risk, Hispanics/Latinx populations generally experience better health and live longer than non-Hispanics (NH) including NHWs: an epidemiological phenomenon known as the Hispanic or Latino health paradox. Over the past decade, our work has helped to raise the profile of comparative Hispanic health and contributed to a significant change its characterization from disparity to paradoxical advantage. The CDC now reports a longevity advantage for Hispanics v. NH Whites as 3.3 years and rising. This change has altered perceptions of Hispanic health, opened the door to investigating the causes of resilience, and spurred interest in more tailored risk estimation models. It has also highlighted limitations of current deficit models which are based solely on risk factors, and the need for a paradigm shift to asset models which incorporate resilience to more fully account for variance in outcomes.