Sora Park Tanjasiri

Sora Park Tanjasiri (born 1964) is a Professor in the Department of Health Science and Director of the Health Promotion Research Institute at the California State University, Fullerton. Her research focusses on community health in diverse populations, in particular Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans.

Early life and education

Tanjasiri earned her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley. She moved to the University of California, Los Angeles for her graduate studies, where she earned a Masters of Public Health and a doctorate. Tanjasiri acted as an advisor for the California Tobacco Control Program from 1992. After earning her doctorate Tanjasiri joined the University of California, Irvine, where she completed postdoctoral research in the Department of Environmental Analysis & Design. She was a founding member of the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum in 1996.

Research and career

Tanjasiri joined the California State University, Fullerton in 2003. She was Promoted to Professor in 2008, where she was the founding Director of the Center for Cancer Disparities Research. In 2010 she was made Director of the Health Promotion Research Institute and in 2014 Chair in the Department of Health Science.

In 2005 Tanjasiri launched the research project WINCART (Weaving an Islander Network for Awareness, Research and Training), which looks to improve the health of underserved populations. The early stages of WINCART involved building a network of Pacific Islander community groups and local universities. Tanjasir has worked to better represent people from underserved communities in biorepositories, as, despite being important in the diagnosis of cancer, Alzheimer's disease and other diseases, biorepositories typically exclude Pacific Islanders. Pacific Islanders are often hesitant to donate to biorepositories because of distrust in public health systems, but their exclusion from these databases can have negative impacts on their health and wellbeing. They suffer from higher rates of tobacco use and obesity and lower levels of early cancer detection. WINCART has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, and was most recently awarded $1.5 million from the National Cancer Institute, which has funded Tanjasiri in teaching the Pacific Islander community about cancer research and detection. She has led screening programs for the Chamorro, Marshallese and Samoans who live in Orange County, California.

At California State University, Fullerton, Tanjasiri has looked to support medical students from minoritised groups through mentorship and structured programs. Alongside her academic research in health disparities, Tanjasiri has studied the scholarly outcomes of these minoritised medical students.

She was awarded the 2015 California State University Wang Family Excellence Awards. In 2016 Tanjasiri hosted the OC Women's Health Policy Summit.

Personal life

Tanjasiri is married with two children.