Alana LeBrón, PhD, MSc, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health, Society, and Behavior in the Wen School of Population and Public Health and the Department of Chicano/Latino Studies in the School of Social Sciences at the University of California, Irvine.
She earned her B.A. in Gender and Women’s Studies with a minor in Biology from Bowdoin College, her Master of Science in Public Health (with a concentration in Maternal and Child Health) from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and her PhD in Public Health from the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan, where she conducted research with scholars at the School of Social Work.
Dr. LeBrón is a public health scholar with expertise in the health of Latiné communities. She brings over 17 years of experience working alongside low-income communities of color to understand how racism -- embedded within policies, systems, and environmental factors -- shapes health and health inequities. She partners with communities to identify, implement, and evaluate community-led interventions to remedy injustices and promote health equity.
Dr. LeBrón’s research has focused on the health equity implications of exclusionary immigration and immigrant policies, exposure to toxic substances, climate justice, and health care inequities. She also studies community-led interventions, such as local government-issued IDs, community health worker/promotores models, anti-racism praxis capacity building, and coalitional approaches to addressing the root causes of health injustices.
Dr. LeBrón’s work is informed by the principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR), which she learned working under the mentorship of her teachers at the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center and Healthy Environments Partnership based in Detroit, Michigan and the University of Michigan.
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Operationalizing Equity: Centering in Communities
Thursday, November 13, 2025
4:15 PM - 4:30 PM CST