Californians are facing health challenges ranging from wildfires and extreme heat to food insecurity and limited access to medical care, according to a UCLA survey released Thursday.
Read more Former OC prosecutor who alleged sexual harassment, retaliation receives $800,000 settlement
The 2025 California Health Interview Survey, conducted by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, found that nearly 30% of Los Angeles County adults, an estimated 2.3 million people, said they or members of their households personally experienced wildfires during the previous two years.
That compares with 6.6%, or about 503,000 adults, who reported such experiences in the 2024 survey.
The increase followed the January 2025 wildfires that devastated Pacific Palisades and Altadena.
Statewide, 21.8% of adults, representing about 6.5 million people, reported experiencing wildfires during the previous two years, compared with 10% in 2024.
The survey also found that 53.4% of California adults, or about 16 million people, reported experiencing wildfire smoke during the previous two years, up from 37%, or 10.9 million people, in 2024.
Among Los Angeles County adults who experienced wildfires, 30.3% reported harm to their mental health, compared with 21.8% statewide.
Among adults who experienced wildfire smoke, 18.8% in Los Angeles County reported harm to their physical health, the highest percentage of any county in the state. The statewide figure was 14.4%.
Across California, the number of adults who said wildfire smoke harmed their mental health rose from 1.6 million in 2024 to 2.1 million in 2025.
“We can’t fix what we don’t know. Providing data on a wide range of health and health-related topics and digging deep into the social drivers of health is what CHIS has specialized in for 25 years,” said Ninez A. Ponce, the survey’s principal investigator and director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. “And we do more than produce data. We make sure data are easily available to everyone to help inform policies and programs that can improve the health of all Californians.”
Extreme heat also emerged as a significant concern, with 52.5% of California adults reporting that they had experienced an extreme heat wave during the previous two years.
Among adults who experienced extreme heat, an estimated 2.8 million said they did not have air conditioning at home, while 3.3 million said they reduced their use of air conditioning because of the expense.
The survey found that 11.8% of adults without air conditioning reported physical health problems associated with extreme heat, compared with 7% of adults who had and used air conditioning.
“Data like this show that as our climate changes and heat waves increase, access to affordable air conditioning is not simply a luxury but a matter of health equity,” said Todd Hughes, director of the California Health Interview Survey.
The findings also highlighted difficulties obtaining medical care, particularly among transgender and gender-expansive adults.
About 20.5% of transgender and gender-expansive adults reported difficulty finding a general physician, compared with 7.6% of all California adults.
Nearly 35% reported difficulty finding a medical specialist, compared with 16.9% of adults statewide.
Access to routine medical care also varied by citizenship status. The survey found that 67.5% of non-U.S. citizen adults had received a routine checkup during the previous year, compared with 72.7% of U.S.-born citizens and 80% of naturalized citizens.
Among adults who witnessed a hate incident, 33.9% said the person was targeted because of perceived immigration status.
Researchers estimated that nearly 1.5 million adults reported witnessing incidents they attributed to immigration status in 2025, almost double the 731,000 estimated in 2024.
Food insecurity remained another concern. Among adults earning less than 200% of the federal poverty level, 45% reported being unable to afford enough food, while 32.6% received CalFresh benefits.
Researchers also released findings on electronic cigarette use among young adults.
The survey found that 9.6% of Californians ages 18 to 29 had vaped during the previous month, compared with 3.7% of adults 30 and older.
Among young adults who had recently vaped, 64% reported at least one barrier to quitting, including fear of failure, concerns about weight gain and difficulty affording medications to help them stop.
Only 20% of those who had visited a doctor during the previous year said they had been advised to quit vaping.
The survey also introduced updated racial and ethnic classifications, including more detailed data on Middle Eastern and North African communities.
Among those adults, 9.2% reported experiencing a hate incident during the previous year, compared with 8.7% of all California adults.
The 2025 survey included responses from 22,036 adults, 957 adolescents and information about 2,673 children provided by their parents.
The annual survey, launched in 2001, is used by researchers, policymakers and health organizations to examine health conditions and disparities across California.
The latest findings are available through the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research’s online data tools at healthpolicy.ucla.edu.
Read more A New York City college student died after being drugged and raped in her dorm, prosecutors say