BPP Fellow presents at National Social Mobility Symposium
Beach Pluralism Fellow Jessica King will be presenting at the National Social Mobility Symposium at CSUSM on February 20, 2025. She is a double major in Comparative World Literature and English - Creative Writing, with minors in Human Development and Health Humanities.
An ongoing societal disparity that marginalized communities of race, faith, and disabilities endure is the inaccessibility of equitable healthcare. When an individual is unable to receive quality care, they are more likely to experience reduced work productivity, prolonged health issues, and economic impoverishment. To amplify the discourse, medical professionals are often inexperienced in pluralistic practices and inclusive approaches to healthcare, creating a social blockade of culture, language, and autonomy. In the context of higher education, students can seek basic health services already covered by their tuition, but preexisting, unaddressed barriers result in marginalized individuals receiving inadequate care or avoiding these services entirely.
California State University, Long Beach is a Hispanic-Serving Institution whose student population consisted of over 38,000 students in Fall 2022. At an institution where minority communities dominate the demographic reports, pluralistic approaches to medical care are essential for student health and success. With the support of CSULB’s Student Health Services and the Beach Pluralism Program, a research project will investigate whether enrolled students experience disparities in receiving equitable healthcare due to marginalizations of race, faith, and/or disability. Prioritizing the social mobility of disadvantaged students through pluralistic healthcare, the results of the mixed-methods survey will contribute to the production of a professional development curriculum for Student Health Services staff to support students of diverse identities, as well as a free self-advocacy workshop for students to preserve their medical autonomy on campus and in the community.
