Families and Medical Care (FAMCARE)
Welcome to the Family and Medical Care (FAMCARE) study website! Our research explores health services access, utilization, and how health service decisions are made, with a special focus on the influence of transnational family relationships in these processes. The goal of this research is to investigate mechanisms underlying health services utilization to better support the needs of the foreign-born population and their families while reinforcing CSULB’s commitment towards equity and inclusion in health.
Join Our Study
Now Recruiting CSULB Students:
- We are looking for CSULB students who are 18 years or older and who have at least one family member living outside the United States.
- The survey takes approximately 20–30 minutes to complete.
- Participation is voluntary and anonymous.
- We will not collect any identifying information (such as your name, email, or IP address).
- After completing the survey, you can opt to receive $5 in Beach Bucks as a token of appreciation.
If you believe you are eligible, you can access the survey using the link provided here. If you know someone else who might qualify, please feel free to share this website with them.
Meet the Team
Principal Investigators (PIs):
Dr. Debbie Huang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health at California State University, Long Beach. She is a psychiatric epidemiologist whose research focuses on improving how mental disorders are measured and understood, with the goal of advancing more equitable mental health care. Dr. Huang’s work explores diagnostic frameworks, disparities in mental health assessment, and the development of innovative tools to strengthen mental health diagnostics. Her research examines how conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, psychosis, suicide, and depression differ across populations, with particular attention to cultural variations in symptom expression and help-seeking behaviors. She is committed to building a more inclusive and accurate understanding of psychopathology, especially within historically underserved communities. By situating mental illness within its broader social and cultural contexts, her work advances efforts to reduce mental health inequities and improve outcomes at the population level.
Heidi West is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Science at California State University, Long Beach. She works at the intersection of migration, gender, and health, primarily in the global context, and explores links between international frameworks and health system responses to demographic change. Her work includes projects in the US, Myanmar, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and cross-country comparisons using binational data and the DHS surveys. Dr. West’s research is bolstered by over a decade of international program experience where she used evidence-based approaches to build capacity and expand research collaboration for diverse institutions. She co-founded an international NGO that uses research and capacity building to help improve decision-making and build sustainable scientific practice in low and middle countries while offering mentored research experiences to students and young professionals from around the world. With a PhD from UCLA’s department of Health Policy and Management, a Master's in Ethics, Peace and Global Affairs from American University, and a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from UC Berkeley, she takes an interdisciplinary and mixed methods approach to producing innovative and timely evidence to inform interventions to improve health equity.
Research Assistant
Sophia Jobson
Sophia Jobson is a current undergraduate student at CSULB studying molecular cell biology and physiology who hopes to continue at CSULB to obtain an MPH, with an emphasis on global health. Her undergraduate thesis project focuses on tumor cell dissemination in Drosophila and the underlying biological mechanism of cancer metastasis. She is working with the Center of Global Health on multiple research projects studying mother-to-child HIV transmission in Tajikistan and the health impact of improper pesticide use in Uzbekistan. Current research interests include socio-political determinates of health, infectious diseases (with a current focus on HIV), migrant health, and global health policy.
