UC Davis physician honored for pioneering efforts to improve health of Hispanic community

Sergio Aguilar-Gaxiola, a professor of internal medicine at the UC Davis School of Medicine and an internationally renowned expert on mental health in ethnic populations, was honored with a National Minority Health Community Leadership Award (Hispanic Community) from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health. The award, one of 10 that recognize excellence and outstanding accomplishments of pioneering leaders dedicated to improving health in specific minority populations, was announced this week at the National Leadership Summit for Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health in Washington, D.C.

“Sergio is a passionate researcher, professor, mentor and advocate whose commitment to improving the health of Latinos has transformed access to mental health services in California and beyond,” said Claire Pomeroy, vice chancellor of human health sciences and dean of the UC Davis School of Medicine. “His work serves as an important model for what can be achieved when practitioners, health care professionals, patients, families, policymakers and communities join together to improve health care.”

Aguilar-Gaxiola recently joined UC Davis to found its newly developed Center for Reducing Health Disparities, which provides leadership and support within and beyond the health system to promote the health and well being of ethnically diverse populations. Major areas of focus include: raising awareness of the unique cultural attributes of minority populations; developing and disseminating culturally and linguistically sensitive communications; streamlining operations to improve access to quality health care; conducting community-based participatory research; working with policymakers, practitioners, consumers and their families and administrators; and offering training and technical assistance to reduce health disparities.

The Minority Health Community Leadership Award specifically recognizes Aguilar-Gaxiola for his pioneering work and longstanding commitment to improving Latino health. As on-site principal investigator of the Mexican American Prevalence and Services Survey — the largest mental health study conducted in the United States on Mexican Americans — he identified the most prevalent mental health disorders in the Mexican-origin population in the Central Valley, showed that the rate of disorders increases the longer the individual resides in the United States, and that children of immigrants have even greater rates of mental disorders. From this study, he developed a model of service delivery that increased access to mental health services among the Central Valley's low-income, underserved, rural populations.

He also conducts cross-national epidemiologic studies on the patterns and correlates of psychiatric disorders in general population samples. He is the coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean of the World Health Organization’s Mental Health Survey and is coordinating the work of the National Mental Health Institute surveys in Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Peru, Costa Rica and Portugal. He also develops culturally and linguistically sensitive diagnostic mental health measures; and translates mental health research into practical information for consumers and their families, health professionals, service administrators and policy makers.

At the national and international level Aguilar-Gaxiola works to address mental health needs of Latinos and other groups requiring better access to quality health care. He is a member of the National Advisory Mental Health Council of the National Institute of Mental Health and a quality assurance advisor to the Pan American Health Organization and World Health Organization. He is acting chair of the Board of Directors of the National Mental Health Association. He is also a member of the California Policy Institutes on Health Statewide Advisory Committee and past member of the Board of Trustees of the American Society of Hispanic Psychiatry. He received his medical degree from the Autonomous University of Guadalajara in Mexico and earned a Ph.D. in Clinical-Community Psychology at Vanderbilt University. He has also pursued postdoctoral studies in health services research at UC San Francisco and at both San Francisco General Hospital and Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute.

The Office of Minority Health was created in 1986 as a result of the landmark, 8-volume, 1985 Report of the Secretary’s Task Force on Black and Minority Health, which was commissioned by Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler to document the extent of health disparities affecting minority Americans and recommend action steps for the nation.