Thank you for visiting. I am Alein, a doctoral candidate in health policy at UC Berkeley. My research focuses on how immigration status, race-ethnicity, and work operate as social determinants of health (SDoH). I’m particularly interested in understanding the antecedents of these SDoH and their consequences for marginalized communities. My doctorate has been funded by the Health Policy Research Scholars with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UC Berkeley, and the Berkeley Fellowship.

My dissertation has three aims:

• In my first paper, I examine the relationship between legal vulnerability and mental health (i.e., anxiety and depression) among precarious migrant workers in California’s East Bay.
• My second paper examines whether racial disparities in pandemic social stressors among employed Californians exist and determines whether frontline workers from racialized groups experience more pronounced pandemic stressors than their White counterparts
• Third, I examine the effectiveness and implementation of StayWell (a text-messaging program to help users cope with depression and anxiety during the pandemic) among Latinx/Hispanic and White users to understand how digital health can be leveraged to address disparities in behavioral health care. 

My goal is to use my findings to inform policy and practice solutions that remediate and prevent the exacerbation of health disparities.