Hye Young’s project aims to understand how to best support community-based health workers (CBHWs) with lived experiences of homelessness, substance use, and incarceration by interviewing CBHWs about their sense of purpose at work, hopes for personal and professional growth, and opportunities to redress misunderstandings and difficult work environments enabled by healthcare institutions and structural injustices. Hye Young is an MPH-65 student in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department. She is interested studying and addressing upstream causes of health disparities among marginalized groups, particularly undocumented and justice-involved communities. Prior to graduate school, Hye Young worked in the food/service industry while volunteering at federally qualified health centers in Oakland Chinatown and San Francisco Bayview-Hunters Point. She has also served as a community liaison and research assistant for The BRAVE Study for four years and running, investigating the social and political determinants of health and health status of Asian/Pacific Islander and Latinx undocumented immigrants in California.
