Office of Minority Health

Sela V. Panapasa, PhD

Dr. Panapasa is a currently faculty research scientist in the Program for Research on Black Americans at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. Her academic work includes research on family support and intergenerational exchanges, population dynamics, racial/ethnic disparities and population-based survey research on Pacific Peoples. She is the principal investigator for numerous projects, including a recent study of Pacific Islander health and the assessment of federal data on Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders. Dr. Panapasa formerly chaired the Census Advisory Committee on Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders and currently serves on the U.S. Census Bureau National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations. She continues to publish on Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander health, including a recent article in the American Journal of Public Health on Native Hawaiian mortality patterns. She has received several awards, including the 2011 Health Disparities Research Leadership Award from the New York University School of Medicine's Center for the Study of Asian American Health and Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum. She is a Pacific Islander of Rotuman, Tongan and Tuvalu descent and originally from Fiji. She received her doctorate in sociology and demography from Brown University and completed a two-year National Institute on Aging postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Social Research Population Studies Center.