Sean Sugai is a second-year undergraduate student at UCLA, double majoring in Human Biology and Society and Anthropology BS and prospectively minoring in Public Health. As a Research Assistant for Dr. Jennifer Wagman in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Sean currently assists on a campus-based sexual violence research study through UC Speaks Up and on a global health research project on the impacts of COVID-19 on intimate partner violence, reproductive coercion, coping mechanisms, mental health, and substance abuse in Uganda through the EMERGE Project at the University of California, San Diego’s Center on Gender Equity and Health. His research interests lie within the intersections of medical anthropology, public health, and medicine, allowing him to augment ethnographic fieldwork and quantitative data to build not only rapport with participants but also integrate alternative solutions that elicit more inclusive, equitable, and empowering results. Ultimately, Sean hopes to utilize more critical approaches to public health issues by exploring the ways in which socioeconomic and cultural barriers hinder access to affordable healthcare, higher education, and sustainable initiatives for marginalized identities and within at-risk populations.
