Frania Mendoza Lua

Dr. Frania Mendoza Lua is a Postdoctoral Trainee in the Health Disparities Research Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Department of Population Health Sciences. Her research examines how exclusionary immigration policy, legal status stratification, and social welfare systems shapes health, wellbeing, and sexual and reproductive health inequities among immigrant families and children of immigrants in the United States.

Prior to academia, Dr. Mendoza Lua worked as a social worker and immigrant rights youth organizer, experiences that continue to inform her community-engaged, policy-relevant scholarship. She holds a PhD from the University of Chicago, an MSW from the University of Michigan, and dual B.A.s in Political Science and Anthropology from UCLA, where she was a Ronald E. McNair Research Scholar.