Document. Preserve. Inspire.
Who we are
The Center for the Critical Study of the Health of Latinx Communities (Critical Study HLC), under the auspices of UC Berkeley’s Latinx Research Center, is a project that documents the rich history of contributions by Latinx-based social movements to justice in health.
Our Mission
Document the struggles of Latinx communities, to push for improved health conditions
Our Goals
This project was established with the important aim of documenting the unrepresented histories of the struggle of the Latinx and Chicanx communities for justice in health and quality of life–meaning housing, access to healthcare services, labor conditions, education, etc. Preserving this history is part of how we hope to reframe and challenge the systemic roots of health inequities in the Latinx community.
Why now?
The COVID-19 pandemic, epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, H1N1 and other chronic diseases have impacted Latinx populations disproportionately–unveiling the sometimes inhuman condition in which they live, work and die. Yet when responses to Latinx health disparities have received mainstream attention, they are often turned into projections of individual incompetence and cultural difference–responses that minimize the structural roots of these conditions. For this reason, our work highlights the legacies, past and present, of Latinx organizing to confront such inequalities–from challenging housing conditions, labor exploitation, environmental injustice, access to education, inadequate infrastructure. In our work, challenging standardized meanings of health towards a more critical definition is a necessary and urgent imperative–that will impact the next generations of Latinx youth and children.
Ways to keep in touch
Latinx Auto-Ethnography Podcast
