Research on ethnic minority adults and children

The culturally diversity of the Phoenix metropolitan area and the State of Arizona provide opportunities for our faculty and students to contribute to an understanding of ethnic minority children and adults.  Researchers across our emphases in child clinical, community/prevention, and health investigate factors that might influence the well-being of subcultural groups.  Several projects address health disparities by developing interventions and testing their effectiveness for Latinos and other ethnic/racial groups.

A Sample of Current Projects

Dr. Felipe González Castro directs the “Corazon Projects” that consist of two related projects.  These projects are: (1) Project Corazon- Life Journey Analysis: Cognitive, Behavioral, and Cultural Factors, and (2) Project Corazon- Resilience in Latinos at Risk for Type 2 Diabetes.  The projects are related by the use of a common research interview protocol.  The major research goals for the present research phase focus on: (1) the transcription of audiotaped interview sections, (2) thematic coding, (3) axial coding, (4) regression model analysis, and (5) story line analysis, and (6) health interviews with the diabetes risk patients.

Dr. Linda Luecken, Dr. Keith Crnic, and Dr. Nancy Gonzales are conducting a 5-year NIH grant "Coregulatory Mechanisms and Postpartum Depression in Low-Income Mexican American Women." The project began 2/20/2009 and will follow 330 mothers and their infants for the first postpartum year. The biopsychosocial processes by which mothers and infants co-regulate each other’s emotions, behavior, and physiology are important foci in the prediction of maternal depression over the first postpartum year.

Dr. Nancy Gonzales is the Principal Investigator of Bridges to High School/Puentes a La Secundaria. “Bridges” is a multi-cohort, experimental field trial of a culturally competent intervention to prevent school dropout and mental health disorders for low-income Mexican American adolescents. Dr. Gonzales is also a co-investigator of the La Familia project, which is a longitudinal study of 700 Mexican American families that examines the interactions among individual, family, school, and community influences on development.

Dr. Armando Piña is a member of the Developmental faculty and also is affiliated with the Clinical faculty. He is interested in the study of intra-individual level risk factors in the development of anxiety disorders in youths and the evaluation of psychosocial preventive and treatment interventions for use with this population. Dr. Piña's work integrates ethnocultural and child-adolescent anxiety research and is aimed at developing empirically informed, culturally robust assessment and intervention strategies for culturally diverse youth.

“AS U Live” is a 5-year study designed to explore resilience among adults in mid-life (40 to 65 years old). The primary aim of this study is to better understand the variables that contribute to maintaining good physical and emotional health throughout life and to learn more about "community resilience," or potential health advantages for individuals residing in community contexts with certain beneficial attributes. Participants will be randomly selected from 40 census tracts in the Phoenix Metro area selected to ensure a representative sample of Hispanic residents.  Clinical faculty members Alex Zautra (PI), Felipe González Castro, Mary Davis, and Linda Luecken are investigators along with several other faculty members.