my Research

my Research

I use queer and feminist theoretical lenses to understand how LGBTQ communities of color sustain their everyday lives and well-being amid social and political death-making conditions.

I have three distinct but connected areas of research.

I use queer and feminist theoretical lenses to understand how LGBTQ communities of color sustain their everyday lives and well-being amid social and political death-making conditions.

I have three distinct but connected areas of research.

Research Area #1: Social Movements, Kinship Networks, and Community Health

My first area examines LGBTQ and Asian American social movements as sites where minoritized communities produce health, belonging, and collective survival. My work instead investigates social movements as health-promoting institutions in their own right: spaces where people form chosen families, share material resources, develop political efficacy, and create practices of care not always captured by conventional health systems or policy.

RELATED publications

Academic journal article titled "Toward a Politics of Care: Southeast Asian Refugee Organizing, Kinship, Care, and Reunion" by authors from University of California. The page includes the article's abstract, keywords, references, and author notes, with a DOI at the bottom.
Page from an academic publication titled 'Caring across Generations: Queer Legacies in Organizing,' authored by James Huynh, Sophanarot Sam, Eric C. Wat, and Sammie Ablaza Wills, discussing LGBTQ history and activism.
Research article from the Journal of Homosexuality titled "Family Is the Beginning but Not the End" about intergenerational LGBTQ family, social support, and health in a Vietnamese American community, with authors and institutional details.
Cover page of a thesis document from the University of California, Los Angeles, titled with the author's name, James Huynh, and the year 2019.

Toward a Politics of Care: Southeast Asian Refugee  Reunion, Kinship, Healing, and Interdependence. Health Promotion Practice, 2024

Caring Across Generations: Queer Legacies in Organizing. QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking, 2023

“Family is the beginning but not the end”: Intergenerational LGBTQ Chosen Family, Social Support, and Health in a Vietnamese American Community Organization. Journal of Homosexuality, 2023

We’re Here, We’re Queer, Happy New Year: Intergenerational LGBTQ Vietnamese American Family, Organizing, and Health. Thesis, 2019

Research Area #2: Structural Racism, Intersectional Oppression, and Population Mental Health

My second area examines how structural racism and intersectional oppression shape population mental health. I conceptualize oppression as operating at multiple levels: structural, community, interpersonal, and individual. Across my quantitative and mixed methods work, I investigate how racism, xenophobia, heterosexism, and other forms of marginalization become embodied as distress, depression, social isolation, and unequal access to care.

RELATED publications

Scientific research paper titled 'Will a Rising Tide Sink All Boats? Examining the Unequal Distribution and Health Impact of Extreme Weather Events', authored by multiple researchers, including Hector E. Alcalá. The abstract discusses climate change, extreme weather events, health disparities, and social impacts, with keywords like equity, disparities, climate change, and sexual orientation.

Will a rising tide sink all  boats?: Examining the unequal distribution and health impact of extreme weather events. Environmental  Justice. 2025

Nail Files California: A Study of Nail Salon Workers and Industry. UCLA Labor Center and California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative. 2024

Community-Based Stress, Social Support, and Depressive Symptoms among Black Adults: A Mediation Analysis. SSM – Mental Health, 2025

Perceived Neighborhood Racial Composition and Depressive Symptoms among Black Americans  across Adulthood: Evaluating the Role of Psychosocial Risks and Resources. Journal of Aging and Health, 2022

Vaccine Incentives Harm Intrinsic Motivation: Evidence from a  Priming Experiment. Health Economics, 2025

The mental  health of young Asian Americans amid the rise of anti-Asian racism. Frontiers in Public Health, 2023

Nail Files California: A Study of Nail Salon Workers and Industry. UCLA Labor Center and California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative. 2024

Contagious Heathens: Exploring Racialization of COVID-19 and Asians  through Stop AAPI Hate Incident Reports. AAPI Nexus: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Policy,  Practice & Community, 2020

A scientific research article titled "Perceived Neighborhood Racial Composition and Depressive Symptoms Among Black Americans Across Adulthood" from the Journal of Aging and Health, with authors' names and affiliations, and sections including abstract, keywords, and introduction.
Screenshot of a scientific research article titled "Community-based stress, social support, and depressive symptoms among black adults: A mediation analysis" from the journal SSM - Mental Health, published by Elsevier, containing the article's title, author names, affiliations, keywords, and part of the abstract.
Cover page of an academic article titled "Racialized Housing Discrimination and Population Health: a Scoping Review and Research Agenda."
The image shows a research article from the journal Health Economics, titled "Vaccine Incentives Harm Intrinsic Motivation: Evidence From a Priming Experiment," authored by Johnny Huynh, Corey Jacinto, and James Huynh, with publication details including submission and acceptance dates.
The cover page of a research report titled 'The mental health of Asian American adolescents and young adults amid the rise of anti-Asian racism,' published by Frontiers in Public Health on January 13, 2023. It includes author names and institutional affiliations, publication details, and a brief overview of the report's objectives, methods, and key findings.
A woman in a white uniform standing inside a nail salon with several clients receiving pedicures in massage chairs behind her. The salon has an open entrance and various nail polish displays. Text overlay indicates this is a study about nail salon workers in California, March 2024, with logos for CA Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative and UCLA Labor Center.
Page from a research article titled "Contagious Heathens: Exploring Racialization of COVID-19 and Asians through Stop AAPI Hate Incident Reports," authored by Kourtney Nham and James Huỳnh, MA, MPH, published in aapnexus Vol. 17, No. 1 & 2 (Fall 2020). The page includes the article's abstract and part of the introduction.

Research Area #3: Queer and Feminist of Color Methods for Health Equity Research

My third research area develops queer and feminist of color approaches to mixed-methods public health research. Across this work, I ask how critical theories can help public health researchers identify forms of harm, care, memory, kinship, and survival often rendered invisible by conventional health measures.

Title page of a research article titled 'Refugee memory-making: Decolonial counterstories from Eelam Tamil and Vietnamese communities' published in Memory Studies journal, with author names Vivian Thambinathan and James Huynh, and an abstract briefly describing the study on refugee memory and history.

Refugee Memory-Making: Decolonial Counterstories from Eelam  Tamil and Vietnamese Communities. Memory Studies Journal, 2026

CBPR is Indeed Political. The  Lancet Regional Health – Americas, 2025

The Asian/American LGBTQ+ Migration and Health Equity (AQMHE) Framework, Social Science & Medicine, 2026

Integrated Methods for Applying CRT to Qualitative COVID Equity  Research. Ethnicity & Disease, 2022

Public health critical race  praxis and methodological counterstorytelling. Research Handbook on Health Education, Health  Promotion and Diversity, 2025

Media Review: Qualitative and Mixed Methods Data Analysis Using Dedoose: A Practical  Approach for Research Across the Social Sciences. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 2020

Brownness is Here, Queerness is not yet (T)Here: Review of The Sense of Brown. GLQ: A  Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 2022

Screenshot of a research article from the journal 'Social Science & Medicine', titled 'The Asian/American LGBTQ+ Migration and Health Equity (AQMHE) Framework.' Contains the journal's header, article title, authors, and the beginning of the article's abstract.
Excerpt from a scientific article titled 'CBPR is indeed political' with author names, journal citation, and references, focusing on community-based participatory research and its political implications.
Research article titled "Integrated Methods for Applying Critical Race Theory to Qualitative COVID-19 Equity Research" from Ethnicity & Disease journal, Summer 2022 issue, Volume 32, Number 3, page 243.
Academic journal page with article titled "Public health critical race praxis and methodological counterstorytelling" by Natalie J. Bradford and colleagues, discussing critical race theory, healthcare, and racialization.
Screenshot of a research article titled 'Media Review' from the Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 2021. The authors are Salmona, Lieber, and Kaczynski, discussing data analysis using Dedoose.
A page from an academic journal or book, specifically from 'GLO: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies,' featuring text about Luna's queer departure, a book titled 'The Sense of Brown' by José Esteban Muñoz, and a section about James Huynh's work. The page includes headings, author names, and references.

RELATED publications