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Wildfires, heat waves and access to care among health-related problems facing Californians

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Wildfires, heat waves and access to care among health-related problems facing Californians

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The new annual California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) data released today provide a more precise look at how the 2025 wildfires affected Californians' health and well-being, while also revealing troubling trends in the health of immigrants, low-income individuals and transgender and gender-expansive communities.

"We can't fix what we don't know. Providing data on a wide range of health and health-related topics and digging deep into the social drivers of health is what CHIS has specialized in for 25 years," said Ninez A. Ponce, principal investigator of the California Health Interview Survey and director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research (CHPR), which runs the survey.

"And we do more than produce data. We make sure data are easily available to everyone to help inform policies and programs that can improve the health of all Californians."

Since its launch in 2001, CHIS has collected data on health insurance coverage, access to care, chronic conditions, the social drivers of health and health needs, and has expanded to hundreds of other topics that collectively reveal patterns showing how people's day-to-day experiences are associated with health outcomes. CHIS findings have informed legislation, budgets, policy, advocacy and research.

In January 2025, fires devastated the Altadena and Pacific Palisades neighborhoods in Los Angeles County, and the updated CHIS data help capture the extent of the impacts. A. 3 million people—said they or members of their household personally experienced wildfires in the previous two years.


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