Gevirtz Graduate School doctoral student Andrew Choi was selected as a winner of the Data Science & SGM Health Equity Paper Competition from Northwestern University. The competition is held through the university’s Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing (ISGMH). Choi’s winning paper is titled “Syndemic Behavioral Risk among Bisexual Adolescents: A Latent Class Analysis.”
ISGMH launched the Data Science & SGM Health Equity Paper Competition to foster student research in relation to data science and sexual and gender minorities. Undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows were invited to submit research papers, which were evaluated by the Institute for “innovation, strength of the argument and analysis, writing quality, and the overall potential impact of the paper.”
Drawing from data in a 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, Choi’s paper analyzes the health disparities experienced by bisexual youth. Of his research, Choi says, “My hope is to apply this research via training to help future mental health professionals develop a more holistic perspective in working with the constituents they seek to serve and empower.”
Andrew Young Choi is a PhD candidate in the Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology (CCSP) at UC Santa Barbara with an emphasis in Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Utah in 2013 with honors degrees (HBS) in Psychology and Sociology. His professional interests involve applying advanced latent variable models to understand culture-bound constructs, within-group variation, and mental and behavioral health disparities among diverse populations, including ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities. He is completing an APA-accredited predoctoral internship at the University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa Counseling and Student Development Center during the 2018-19 year.