Bringing the Immigrant Health Experience Alive Through Journalism

Journalism reveals immigrants’ stories, revealing the health impacts of community ties, poverty, violence and life in urban and rural environments.

Lunch will be provided

About Michelle Levander
Levander has been a reporter, editor and journalism educator for close to two decades. She has worked in California at the San Jose Mercury News and in Asia for the Asian Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine Asia. She also spent a year in Mexico, studying and later writing about immigrants and the tug North as an Inter American Press Association Fellow at El Colegio de Mexico and El Colegio de Michoacan.

In 2004, Levander became the founding director of The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, a program of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. The program has educated more than 500 journalists through short intensive seminars. Its fellows have gone on to win prizes and promotions, and they've produced hundreds of excellent health stories as Fellowships projects, on often unexplored topics.

About the Immigrant Health Initiative (iHi)
The Immigrant Health Initiative (iHi) is spearheaded by a group of faculty members from eight USC schools to find new solutions to reduce the persistent health disparities and improve health outcomes in the U.S. Alarmed by the rising prevalence of obesity and chronic diseases among immigrants after their arrival in the U.S. and coupled with the increasing proportion of new immigrant populations in this country, the iHi recognizes the importance of immigrant health in public health policies and practices. Encouraged by the incredible resilience and ingenuity displayed by the immigrants and the vast cultural assets among them, the iHi intends to identify positive values and healthy traditions of immigrants and help them keep their strengths and Americanize with good health. The goal of iHi is to engage immigrants in health promotion and disease prevention and redefine the American lifestyle to benefit all.

The iHi is funded by the USC Collaboration Fund to foster collaborations across disciplines and create new research and educational opportunities. With the racial, ethnic, cultural, and immigrant diversities of the USC community and the location in Los Angeles, the iHi presents an exciting vision which will expand the horizon of public health research and policy, develop effective strategies that are applicable and sustainable to reduce the health disparities among immigrants, and enrich the American culture.