Who We Are

The Center for Health Equity Research (CHER), in the College of Health and Human Services at California State University, Long Beach, works with community members and partner organizations with a focus on diverse, underserved, and high risk populations to promote health and reduce health disparities through:

  • Research
  • Innovative interventions
  • Rigorous evaluation

What is Health Equity?

Health equity means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be healthier. This requires removing obstacles to health such as poverty, discrimination, and their consequences, including powerlessness and lack of access to good jobs with fair pay, quality education and housing, safe environments, and health care. How these terms are defined has implications for framing research questions and community engagement work.

Health Equity Research Matters

We think progress can only be made when the complicated causal pathways leading to disparate, unequal, and inequitable health are reported, studied, and understood within the social and structural contexts wherein they occur. This informs appropriate courses for future health interventions, programs, and public policy action: the primary focus of our Center’s work.