Dr. Anna Choi Receives Grant for Elderly Minority Health Research

The Pepperdine School of Public Policy (SPP) is pleased to announce that Anna Choi, James Q. Wilson Visiting Professor at SPP, has been awarded a grant for her project with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Center for Health Improvement of Minority Elderly (CHIME), funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Choi will work with mentors, Ronald Hays, professor of medicine and health policy and management at UCLA, and Luisa Blanco, associate professor of public policy at SPP. 

This pilot project aims to study the relationship between neighborhood perceptions, neighborhood characteristics, and physical activity levels and obesity outcomes among the elderly minority in California. Choi plans to use the California Health Interview Survey data and the American Community Survey data from the Census Bureau to study how neighborhood characteristics is linked to elderly’s perceptions of their neighbors and how different perceptions of neighbors is associated with the likelihood of engaging in walking for leisure and its frequency.