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30
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Introduction
I am a medical sociologist who examines how institutional arrangements and policies create adverse chronic disease outcomes in diverse Latinx populations. I have examined nutrition, weight outcomes and chronic disease risk in different parts of the United States, new and traditional destinations for Latinx migrant and US-born Latinx communities. I am formally trained in grounded theory and situational analysis, but have transitioned to more mixed methods also integrating MLM, SEM & biomarkers.
Additional affiliations
July 2017 - June 2018
January 2013 - present
August 2010 - August 2012
Publications
Publications (30)
To understand how older adults perceive and navigate their neighborhoods, we examined the implications of activity in their neighborhoods for their health. We interviewed 38 adults (ages 62-85) who lived in San Francisco or Oakland, California. Seven key themes emerged: (1) people express a wide range of expectations for neighborliness, from "we do...
Background
Studies suggest that US Latinos have a higher prevalence of obesity than White Americans. However, obesity may differ by pre-immigration factors and Latinos’ cultural representations of ideal body image. This paper explores whether country of origin’s stage in the nutrition transition is related to Latino immigrants’ BMI category and sel...
There warrants a discussion regarding how nutrition discourses transform lay health practices. Here, I discuss how the adaptation of nutrition discourses among Latina immigrants in San Francisco produces a negotiation between a discourse of nourishment and a discourse of satisfaction in their practice of comiendo bien (eating well). The discourse o...
Background:
Dietary changes among Latino immigrants are often attributed to acculturation. Acculturation-diet research typically assumes that migration to the US is necessary for negative dietary changes to occur in Latino immigrants' diets.
Objective:
The goal of this article is to demonstrate that extant acculturation research is not adequate...
Background
Utilizing a psychosocial stress approach, we report psychosocial stressors that Latina/o immigrant day laborers in Baltimore report as workplace hazards and the contextual factors that shape these stressors.
Methods
Through a community–academic partnership, we conducted focus groups (n = 18) and key informant interviews (n = 9) using in...
Introduction
Little research has examined how community-engaged and -participatory dietary interventions adapted to remotely-accessible settings during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Objectives
To identify lessons learned in design, implementation, and evaluation of a remotely-accessible, community-based, nurse-led approach of a culturally-tailored whole...
Introduction
Studies suggest that higher rates of excess adiposity in Black women may in part be driven by experiences of racism. Racial microaggressions, which include unintentional and subtle slights and insults, and responses to racism such as racism-related vigilance, may contribute to adiposity in this population. This study examined these und...
Background
There are concerns about the representation of vulnerable and underrepresented racial-ethnic minorities in biomedical and public health research, particularly when the research requires the collection of biospecimens. The current paper reports on the acceptability, feasibility, and ethics of saliva collection in a study examining the rel...
There have been few analyses that discuss how power relations present in participatory budgeting (PB) may hinder or facilitate the future of PB. Drawing from PB examples in the United States we discuss the importance of power and positionality analyses during PB stages with the most deliberative participation for community members: forming steering...
Objective:
Nearly two-thirds of Black women in the US are obese. Studies have focused more on lifestyle and behavioral factors to explain racial disparities; less research has examined psychosocial factors such as psychological distress and social cohesion. While research suggests that social cohesion may confer benefits for health, no studies hav...
A growing body of research is documenting how racial and ethnic populations embody social inequalities throughout the life course. Some scholars recommend the integration of biospecimens representing the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, neurological and endocrinological processes, and inflammation to capture the embodiment of inequality. Howeve...
In this chapter, I delineate the historical and theoretical foundations of acculturation in anthropology, sociology, and psychology; identify popular measures of acculturation; and outline their critiques. After this multidisciplinary refresher, I explore how the process of acculturation can be conceptualized and investigated in relation to one hea...
This book comes at a critical time in U.S. history. Currently, more than 18% of the U.S. population is Latinx, and by the year 2050, it is estimated that nearly 30% of the population will be Latinx. In our introduction, we first provide definitions and clarifications of the nomenclature used throughout this volume, particularly the use of the pan-e...
This timely volume serves as a comprehensive and much-needed update to the literature on Latinx health. As both the United States and Latinx subgroups experience and anticipate demographic shifts, it is critical to examine the current epidemiology of Latinx health, as well as the factors influencing this population's health and well-being. Chapters...
Although community-based health institutions in the United States have a foundational history in grassroots advocacy and community autonomy, today they face multiple barriers in promoting their community’s values and addressing their community’s material, political, and health needs. The goals of this chapter are to identify the institutional barri...
Sociologists recognize that immigration enforcement policies are forms of institutionalized racism that can produce adverse health effects in both undocumented and documented Latinos and Mexican-origin persons in the United States. Despite this important advancement, little research examines the relationship between fear of immigration enforcement...
Abstract
Objective: Fear of deportation (FOD) is a prevalent concern among mixed-status
families. Yet, our understanding of how FOD shapes human health and development
is in its infancy. To begin to address this knowledge gap, we examined the relationship
between household FOD, body mass index (BMI) percentiles and salivary uric
acid (sUA), a bioma...
Uric acid (UA) is the end product of the metabolic breakdown of purine nucleotides. Recent studies have measured UA in saliva in relation to obesity and chronic disease risk. Given the increasing prevalence of metabolic syndrome among Latino youth, we examined gender and age differences in salivary uric acid (sUA) and weight in a sample of Mexican-...
Utilizing a bricolage of interactionist cultural studies, ethnic foodways, and situational analysis this paper examines how Latino immigrants, representing six countries and multiple preimmigration class positions, come to perform Latinidad through the lay health practice of comiendo bien (eating well). Comiendo bien was examined through participan...
BACKGROUND: We examined the structural conditions contributing to psychosocial stressors
among Baltimore’s Latina/o immigrant contingent workers through a qualitative study in a
community-academic partnership.
METHODS: Focus groups (n=18) and key informant interviews (n=9) were conducted using
instruments developed between academics and the communi...
BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES: Psychological and social demands are increasingly recognized as workplace stressors, along with physical and environmental hazards. To explore this comprehensive set of threats in Baltimore's Latino worker community, we performed an exploratory qualitative study through a community-academic partnership.
METHODS: Four focu...
There is an increasing interest in neighbourhoods in the public health and epidemiology literature. Conventional epidemiologic investigations of neighbourhood health associations have primarily used census and administrative data to describe neighbourhoods. These studies report that people who live in neighbourhoods with higher proportions of peopl...
BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES: Latinos suffer a higher rate of work-related injuries and fatalities in the United States than any other racial/ethnic group. Through a multi-stakeholder project between Casa de Maryland Baltimore Workers' Center, an interdisciplinary Bienestar student volunteer group, and the NIOSH sponsored Education and Research Center f...
Ideoscape is a term introduced by Arjun Appadurai (1990) to represent one of the
five contemporary global cultural flows that is constitutive of linked images and ideas
related to the political discourses of the Enlightenment such as sovereignty, freedom,
rights, welfare, representation, and democracy. Ideoscapes are attempts to capture state
power...
Abstract. Thesis (Honors)--Barry University, 2003. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 60-64). Typescript.
