Ayako Miyashita Ochoa, JD

Core Co-Director, Policy Impact Core


Ayako Miyashita Ochoa, JD, is an Adjunct Professor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Department of Social Welfare. She serves as Associate Director of the Southern California HIV/AIDS Policy Research Center which brings the most relevant and timely evidence to bear on California’s efforts to develop and maintain efficient, cost-effective, and accessible programs and services to people living with or at risk for HIV. Ayako’s interests focus on HIV-related health disparities at the intersection of race/ethnicity, sexual and gender identity, and migrant status. Prior to her position at Luskin, she served as a Director in the Clinical and Experiential Learning department of UCLA School of Law. Ayako taught courses focused on HIV law and policy and, as a licensed attorney, she directed the Los Angeles HIV Law and Policy Project (LA HLPP), a legal services collaborative dedicated to addressing the unmet legal needs of primarily low-income people living with HIV in Los Angeles County.

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS:

1. Hunter, L. A., Packel, L. J., Chitle, P., Beltran, R. M., Rafie, S., De Martini, L., Dong, B., Harris, O., Holloway, I. W., Miyashita Ochoa, A., & McCoy, S. I. (2023). Opportunities to Increase Access to HIV Prevention: Evaluating the Implementation of Pharmacist-Initiated Pre-exposure Prophylaxis in California. Open forum infectious diseases, 10(11), ofad549. https://doi.org/10.1093/ofid/ofad549

2. Hong, C., Ochoa, A. M., Wilson, B. D. M., Wu, E. S. C., Thomas, D., & Holloway, I. W. (2023). The associations between HIV stigma and mental health symptoms, life satisfaction, and quality of life among Black sexual minority men with HIV. Quality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation, 32(6), 1693–1702. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-023-03342-z

3. Small, L., Beltran, R. M., Cordero, L., Lau, C., Shanur, S., & Miyashita Ochoa, A. (2023). The invisibility of Black and Latina women in sexual health care: shifting from biological individualism to intersectionality. Culture, health & sexuality, 25(8), 1084–1100. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2022.2124458