To say that William Vega is a man in demand would be a bit of an understatement.

As a Provost Professor at USC, he holds appointments in psychiatry, preventive medicine, family medicine, psychology, and gerontology, not to mention his main role at the USC School of Social Work, where he serves as executive director of the Roybal Institute on Aging.

“It’s an all-out effort and it’s taking all my energy and aspirations,” he acknowledged. “I’ve been more than willing to do it because I feel it’s part of my mission here.”

A self-described specialist in behavioral health and multicultural epidemiology, Vega has pursued groundbreaking research on a wide array of topics, from Latino immigration and the process of cultural adaptation to mental illness.

It’s precisely his diverse background that makes Vega such a strong fit for the institute, which is tasked with bridging the many disciplines that touch on issues of aging.

“His interdisciplinary focus is exactly what is needed in any kind of program addressing older people,” said Marilyn Flynn, dean of the School of Social Work. “He is able to relate to different methodologies and bodies of knowledge, he’s willing to accept leadership responsibility, and he’s able to work with both local and national constituencies. He’s one of the most gifted scholars I’ve ever met.”

Local boy does good

Born in White Memorial Hospital, Vega spent his formative years in the neighborhoods of South Los Angeles. Although his family initially lived in Lincoln Heights, his childhood was punctuated by frequent moves.

There was no cure for tuberculosis in the 1950s, and when Vega’s mother contracted the infectious disease, hospitalization became a common occurrence.

“She would come out, she would lapse, and she would go back in again,” he said.

Vega’s father, a farm worker and gardener, could not take care of a young child during the day, so Vega was shuffled among different family members in some of the most impoverished areas of Los Angeles, an experience he credits for his lifelong interest in minority communities.

As a young man, he took a job in Huntington Park at a cannon shell manufacturer for the Army and Navy during the Vietnam War. But grinding away on the graveyard shift soon took its toll on Vega’s back as well as his psyche.

“I thought, man, I can’t do this forever,” he said. “I found my crooked path into academia.”

After an initial start at the University of Oregon, he completed his undergraduate studies in sociology in 1967 at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also earned a master’s degree and doctorate in criminology.

“That was my intellectual bathhouse,” he said. “I was exposed to fantastic scholars, especially in sociology.”

Getting perspective

By the late 1970s, Vega was working in the research unit of the California Department of Mental Health, conducting epidemiological studies in communities with significant need for mental health services. The experience gave him a unique perspective on how services are distributed to different socioeconomic groups.

In addition to holding several professorships, Vega continued to examine community-based interventions and mental health issues, in addition to exploring broader issues such as maintenance of adequate weight and nutrition among underserved populations.

After spending several years pursuing longitudinal research on children and families, Vega shifted his focus to large-scale studies of adult mental health and substance abuse during specific life stages. He conducted some of the largest studies using biological samples to connect issues such as substance abuse and pregnancy.

“I spent an enormous number of years looking at the life course,” he said. “Most of my research has been on behavioral health, both mental health-related problems and substance abuse-related problems, and trying to understand them in the context of the life course across generations.”

A particular issue that caught his attention was the phenomenon of adaptation among Latino populations. In general, international immigrants tend to have problems adjusting to new cultures, which is often reflected in higher rates of mental disorders such as schizophrenia.

However, Vega found that the experience of Mexican immigrants stands in stark contrast to their counterparts in Europe and other countries.

“Mexico is unique in the world from the standpoint of having this wide common border and such a tremendously high volume of immigration between two countries with widely different income and education levels,” he said. “The information we’ve had in the last 30 years has been that despite the fact that these immigrants are coming with very poor educational backgrounds compared to the United States as well as much lower income, they seem to do very well.”

Data suggests that despite a rough life of manual labor and poor social support, these immigrants tend to live a little longer, or as Vega puts it, “get a couple more years on the road.” These findings have critical implications for social programs, public policy, and aging research in general.

However, it could be a temporary phenomenon, he noted, adding that rates of mortality and chronic disease seem to normalize over time. In addition, the children of immigrants tend to struggle with mental health and substance abuse issues earlier in life and more frequently than their native-born peers.

Expanding focus

Vega is interested in further exploring those intergenerational cycles, in addition to minimizing risk and addressing the lack of social mobility for disadvantaged populations.

“U.S.-born children of immigrants are left in the backwater and are at higher risk for chronic disease earlier in adulthood than are immigrants,” he said. “It’s a dynamic trend that we’re trying to determine how best to intervene in and address. It should also be said that recently the health of immigrants seems to be deteriorating due to weight-related health problems as well.”

During the last decade, Vega has broadened his research focus beyond families and communities to entire systems of care. It’s an area that has gained considerable attention in recent years, particularly with the advent of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration’s national health care reform effort.

As researchers begin seeking ways to create accessible health care systems and improve the effectiveness and quality of care, Vega said aging research has remained on the margins, particularly for minority populations.

“Health care is really an area we have to keep hammering at because serious gaps in care and quality of treatment have persisted despite reforms,” he said. “We know we need coordinated care, it’s just we don’t quite know how to do it. We’re just now learning for the first time about something that should have been done from the beginning.”

Coming home

Eight years ago, Vega made his return to Los Angeles—the first time he had lived in the region since childhood. He spent several years as a professor in the Department of Family Medicine at UCLA, where he also directed the Luskin Center for Innovation.

But when the opportunity to lead the Roybal Institute on Aging presented itself, Vega jumped at the chance. It was clear that USC officials recognized the enormous social value of aging research, he said, particularly for low-income populations in the communities of Los Angeles.

“It looked like a tremendous opportunity that would be just right for me at that point in my career,” he said. “Of course, that brings with it an enormous obligation to fill a lot of different shoes and build the public visibility of the institute as well as the substantive capacity to carry out its mission.”

In addition to leading a marked expansion of the institute’s active research, Vega has developed new relationships with colleagues in Latin America and China. He is also working with the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics to build a resource center for minority aging research.

“I firmly want to focus on how to get healthy populations aging in place,” he said. “My role is really to be the person to set the tone and get the momentum [the Roybal Institute] requires to keep moving forward.”