Public health experts and social scientists will study migrant health at a new center at UC San Diego. The center intends to improve migrants' health and access to care.
The new Center for Migration and Health brings together 40 scholars from nine University of California campuses.
It's the world's first center to take a multidisciplinary approach to study how migration affects people's health around the globe and on the San Diego Tijuana border.
Steffanie Strathdee, Associate Dean of global health sciences at UCSD, will help direct the center.
She says migration and health is an understudied area. "In the border region, I've found that mobility is one of the strongest risk factors for HIV, sexually transmitted infections and TB. So, this really points to the need to understand this phenomenon more clearly."
In addition to sexually transmitted diseases, researchers also plan to look at occupational safety and how deporting migrants affects public health in Mexico.