He says he was disappointed, but he hasn’t given up on finding ways to help kids and families lead healthier lives. He is now a health researcher in Philadelphia, where he is professor of health policy and chair of the Department of Health Management and Policy at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health. Dr. Ortega works to solve health problems by testing a “hypothesis” and seeing if it is true or false. Then he tries to figure out how to make things better. He is especially interested in improving the health of Latino children, who he says tend to have more health problems than other children and may have more trouble getting the care they need. “I hope that the research I do informs the ways doctors, hospitals, and clinics take care of kids,” says Dr. Ortega, who is director of Dornsife’s Center for Population Health and Community Impact. Part of his research looks at asthma. He wants to know why Latino kids tend to have a lot of breathing problems, and whether some asthma attacks may actually be panic attacks. He is also interested in getting more families covered by health insurance. He says some Latino kids don’t get medical care because they don’t have health insurance and their families may not be able to afford a doctor. Their families may be undocumented immigrants and have trouble getting a job, or they may face discrimination. Alex Ortega Asking questions, finding answers Dr. Alex Ortega hoped to do some- thing about “food swamps.” That’s the term some health researchers use to describe neighbor- hoods where corner stores are packed with potato chips, soda, candy, and other junk food. He wanted to make it easier for people to find and buy nutritious foods instead of sugary, high-calorie snacks. He got the help of a group of teenagers to rearrange food items at several stores. They put fruits and vegetables in the front and potato chips in the back. The experience had a good effect on the teens, Dr. Ortega says. They started to eat fewer chips and drink less soda. They also talked to their parents about healthy cooking and tried new recipes at home. Some even lost excess weight, he says. Unfortunately, Dr. Ortega’s experiment, which he conducted while working in Los Angeles, didn’t succeed in getting rid of food swamps. Customers still bought the junk food, even if they had to walk to the back of the store to get it, Dr. Ortega says. 16