Ninez Alafriz Ponce is an American public health researcher who is the Fred W. & Pamela K. Wasserman Endowed Chair and a professor at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Ponce leads the California Health Interview Survey, a state health survey that collects information on public health.
Ponce studied science at the University of California, Berkeley. She holds a degree in public policy from Harvard University. Ponce returned to California, where she studied toward a doctorate at University of California, Los Angeles. Her doctoral research explored whether Vietnam could overcome malnutrition.
Ponce investigates socio-ecological predictors for health. She is an advocate for improving the quality of health data, advocating for it to go beyond including underrepresented communities and instead making them center their experience. She actively works to democratize access to data, advocating that data can be used to inform, educate and drive change.
Ponce leads the California Health Interview Survey, a state health survey that collects information on public health, sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) that reaches over 20,000 people a year. The survey is the only large-scale survey that includes Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and is available in English, Spanish, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese and Korean. It has been used to evaluate the impact of the federal âÂÂpublic chargeâ rule, a test used in immigration proceedings to evaluate whether immigrants are likely to depend on government assistance, and food assistance programs for undocumented migrants.
In 2019, Asian Health Services named Ponce âÂÂthe PeopleâÂÂs ResearcherâÂÂ. Ponce was awarded the 2024 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Elizabeth Fries Health Education Award. Ponce was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2025.