2010 Fellows
Joanna Almeida, ScD, MPH, MSW
Assistant Professor, School of Social Work
Simmons College
Mentor: Charles Kaplan, PhD
Dr. Joanna Almeida is currently an Assistant Professor at Simmons School of Social Work. Dr. Almeida earned a ScD in Social Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute on Urban Health Research at Northeastern University. Almeida’s research is focused on understanding social factors such as stress, poverty, discrimination and neighborhood conditions that influence the deterioration of immigrants’ health after arrival in the US. She is currently co-investigator on a NIAAA funded RO1 that is testing the efficacy of culturally adapted Motivational Interviewing (MI) vs. standard MI on hazardous drinking among Latinos in Boston, MA. Dr. Almeida’s work has been covered by the Boston Globe, Boston Public Radio and National Public Radio.
Selected Publications:
Almeida, J., Belanoff, C., & Erbetta, K. F. (2022). The Time has Come for All States to Measure Racial Discrimination: A Call to Action for the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS). Maternal and child health journal, 26(1), 7–11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-021-03160-0
Almeida, J., Barber, C., Rosen, R. K., Nicolopoulos, A., & O’Brien, K. H. M. (2021). “In the Moment I Wanted to Kill Myself, and Then After I Didn’t”: A Qualitative Investigation of Suicide Planning, Method Choice, and Method Substitution Among Adolescents Hospitalized Following a Suicide Attempt. Youth & Society, 0044118X211035950.
O’Brien KMH, Nicolopoulos A*, Almeida J, Aguinaldo, LD & Rosen, RK. (2019). Why adolescents attempt suicide: A qualitative study. Archives of Suicide Research. 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/13811118.2019.1675561.
Lee DS, Colby SM, Rohsenow DJ, Martin R, Rosales R, Tavares-McCallum T, Falcon L, Almeida J & Cortes DE. (2019). A randomized controlled trial of motivational interviewing tailored for heavy drinking Latinos/as. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.87(9): 815-830. DOI:10.1037/ccp0000428.
Funding:
NIAAA. R01. (December 2012- November 2017). A randomized clinical trial of culturally tailored motivational interviewing. Co-Investigator.
NICHD. Loan Repayment Program. (August 2012- July 2013). The health and wellbeing of immigrant children and youth: Risk and protective factors and social pathways.
Guadalupe Bacio, PhD, MA
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology and Chicano/a Latino/a Studies
Pomona College
IRTI Mentor: Guillermo Prado, PhD
Guadalupe Bacio is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and the Intercollegiate Department of Chicana/o-Latina-o Studies at Pomona College. The overarching goal of her program of research is to understand and address disparities in patterns and consequences of alcohol and drug use encountered by Latinx adolescents of different immigrant generations. To this end, one line of Dr. Bacio’s research focuses on understanding the mechanisms that explain the immigrant paradox in the etiology and development of alcohol and drug use among Latinx youth of first-, second-, and third-generation immigrant. On another line of research, Dr. Bacio examines the effectiveness of school-based adolescent alcohol intervention programs for Latinx and other minority youth populations. Dr. Bacio directs the Cultural contExts, adolesceNt healTh behavioRs, & develOpment (CENTRO) Research Lab. The CENTRO lab combines several research methods including community-participatory research, laboratory-based tasks, and large-scale surveys.
Selected Publications
Bacio G. A. (2021). Motivational pathways to problematic drinking among Latinx college drinkers. Experimental and clinical psychopharmacology, 29(5), 466–478. https://doi.org/10.1037/pha0000516,. PMID: 34398637
Bacio, G.A., Tomlinson, K., Garcia, T.A., Anderson, K.G., Brown, S.A., & Myers, M.G. (2017) Impact of ethnic composition on mechanisms of change in substance use prevention groups.Prevention Science, 18(1): 61-70. doi: 10.1007/s11121-016-0741-5
Funding:
NIH, T32. (September 2014- 2016). Alcohol Research in the Science/Practicioner Model: Behavioral Sciences in Alcohol Abuse.
Angela Bazzi, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor, Department of Family Medicine and Public Health
University of California San Diego
Mentor: Hortensia Amaro, PhD
Angela Bazzi, PhD, MPH, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of San Diego. Dr. Bazzi’s quantitative and qualitative research seeks to identify and intervene upon the social and structural drivers of infectious disease transmission. Her research has explored how HIV, sexually transmitted infections, hepatitis C, and other infectious diseases disproportionately affect socially marginalized populations of people who use and inject drugs in the United States and globally. With funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Providence/Boston Center for AIDS Research, she is currently developing and implementing interventions to improve the utilization of antiretroviral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV prevention among people who inject drugs. She is also investigating the impacts of novel and persistent structural forces on access to critical prevention services among disenfranchised people who use drugs. She is an Editorial Fellow at Drug and Alcohol Dependence and teaches a course on women and substance use. Dr. Bazzi completed an MPH at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, a PhD in Global Health at the University of California, San Diego, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. Prior to her research training, she was a Reproductive Health Fellow at the United States Agency for International Development.
Selected Publications
Ogden, S. N., Dichter, M. E., & Bazzi, A. R. (2022). Intimate partner violence as a predictor of substance use outcomes among women: A systematic review. Addictive behaviors, 127, 107214. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2021.107214. PMID: 34933089.
Motavalli, D., Taylor, J. L., Childs, E., Valente, P. K., Salhaney, P., Olson, J., … & Bazzi, A. R. (2021). “Health is on the back burner:” multilevel barriers and facilitators to primary care among people who inject drugs. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 36(1), 129-137. PMID: 32918199.
Biello KB, Salhaney P, Valente P, Childs E, Olson J, Earlywine JJ, Marshall BDL, Bazzi AR. Ecological momentary assessment of daily drug use and harm reduction service utilization among people who inject drugs in non-urban areas: a concurrent mixed-method feasibility study. Drug & Alcohol Dependence. 2020; Jul 10; 214 [e-pub ahead of print]: PMID:32679521
Edeza A, Bazzi A, Salhaney P, et al. HIV Pre-exposure Prophylaxis for People Who Inject Drugs: The Context of Co-occurring Injection- and Sexual-Related HIV Risk in the U.S. Northeast. Subst Use Misuse. 2020;55(4):525-533. doi:10.1080/10826084.2019.1673419
Funding:
NIH, T32. (September 2012- July 2013). Aids training grant.
NIDA, R36. (August 2011- August 2012). Dissertation research on sexual partner concurrency in the Mexico-U.S border region.
NIDA, K01. (April 2017- March 2022). Implementing pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV prevention among people who inject drugs.
NIDA, R01. (July 2020- May 2023). Efficacy of a Community-Based Prep Uptake Intervention for People who Inject Drugs in the US Northeast.
NIDA, K01-S. (April 2020- March 2022). Preventing HIV infection among people who inject drugs during COVID-19.
Rick Cruz, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
Utah State University
Mentor: Nancy Gonzales, PhD
Rick A. Cruz is an assistant professor in psychology, and a faculty member in the Combined PhD program in Clinical/Counseling/School Psychology at USU. Rick completed his PhD at the University of Washington in Seattle with a focus in Child Clinical Psychology, and his APA accredited clinical internship at the Institute for Juvenile Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Rick completed his undergraduate training in Psychology, with a minor in Spanish, at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Dr. Cruz’s research is focused on the intersection of cultural and familial processes as they influence ethnic minority youth development, with a particular emphasis on Latino adolescent substance use risk and mental health issues. He is currently investigating cultural change and family disruption as precursors of substance use development among Mexican-origin adolescents. Dr. Cruz also has secondary interests in evaluating prevention and intervention programs for youth internalizing and externalizing problems, and assessing the utility of patient-reported outcomes to promote effective and efficient mental health services for youth and adults. Dr. Cruz’s work leverages quantitative methodology, such as SEM, latent growth curve modeling and multilevel modeling, to answer substantive questions related to youth development, family functioning, intervention programs and measurement.
Selected Publications:
Stein, G. L., Jensen, M., Christophe, N. K., Cruz, R. A., Martin Romero, M., & Robins, R. (2022). Shift and Persist in Mexican American Youth: A Longitudinal Test of Depressive Symptoms. Journal of research on adolescence : the official journal of the Society for Research on Adolescence, 10.1111/jora.12714. Advance online publication. DOI: 10.1111/jora.12714, PMID: 35037333.
Cruz, R. A., Navarro, C., Carrera, K., Lara, J., Mechammil, M., & Robins, R. W. (2021). Mexican-Origin Youths’ Trajectories of Internalizing Symptoms from Childhood into Adolescence and Associations with Acculturation Processes. Journal of clinical child and adolescent psychology : the official journal for the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, American Psychological Association, Division 53, 50(1), 118–130. DOI: 10.1080/15374416.2019.1622120, PMID: 31215798.
Andresen, F., Monteith, L., *Kugler, J., Cruz, R. A., & Blais, R. K. (2019). Institutional betrayal following military sexual trauma is associated with more severedepression and specific PTSD symptom clusters.Journal of Clinical Psychology. doi: 10.1002/jclp.22773.
Cruz, R. A., *Mechammil, M., & Robins, R. W. (2019).Familism, sibling relationship qualities, and sibling sex constellation as predictors of alcohol use among Mexican-origin adolescents. Journal of Family Psychology.doi: 10.1037/fam0000531
Funding:
NIDA. F31. (August 2011- August 2013). Acculturation, family context, and Mexican origin youth substance use risk across time
Nalini Negi, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor, School of Social Work
University of Maryland, Baltimore
Mentor: Avelardo Valdez, PhD
Dr. Negi’s research has emphasized the social etiology and mechanisms that confer risk of psychological distress and substance abuse among migrant populations such as Latino transmigrants (migrants who move back and forth between borders) and day laborers. She has published extensively in scientific journals as well as edited two books, one on social work practice with Latinos by Lyceum Press and one on social work practice with transnational migrants by Columbia University Press. Dr. Negi is currently principal investigator on a grant funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse examining the drug use patterns of Latino migrant day laborers in Baltimore city. In 2012, she received the National Award for Excellence in Research by a New Investigator from the National Hispanic Science Network. She was also awarded the 2012-2013 Exemplary Faculty of the Year Award for her outstanding teaching by the Student Government Association of the SSW UMB. Dr. Negi received her doctoral degree in social work from the University of Texas at Austin in August 2008. Her dissertation work examined the risk and protective factors of psychological well-being and substance use among Latino day laborers. Dr. Negi’s dissertation received the top honor for a dissertation by the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR), the largest scientific organization representing social work in the United States. Dr. Negi speaks five languages and has lived in seven countries in five continents.
Selected Publications:
Negi, N. J., & Siegel, J. L. (2022). Social service providers navigating the rapid transition to telehealth with Latinx immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. DOI: 10.1037/ort0000626., PMID: 35482654.
Negi NJ, Siegel J, Calderon M, Thomas E, Valdez A. “They Dumped Me Like Trash”: The Social and Psychological Toll of Victimization on Latino Day Laborers’ Lives. Am J Community Psychol. 2020;65(3-4):369-380. doi:10.1002/ajcp.12406.
Negi, N. J., Siegel, J. L., Sharma, P. B., & Fiallos, G. (2021). “The solitude absorbs and it oppresses”:‘Illegality’and its implications on Latino immigrant day laborers’ social isolation, loneliness and health. Social Science & Medicine, 273, 113737. PMID: 33609966.
Negi NJ, Swanberg JE, Clouser JM, Harmon-Darrow C. Working under conditions of social vulnerability: Depression among Latina/o immigrant horse workers. Cultur Divers Ethnic Minor Psychol. 2020;26(1):54-60. doi:10.1037/cdp0000276.
Nowotny, K. M., Cepeda, A., Perdue, T., Negi, N., & Valdez, A. (2017). Risk Environments and Substance Use Among Mexican Female Sex Work on the US–Mexico Border. Journal of Drug Issues, 47(4), 528-542.
Funding:
NIDA. K01. (July 2013- July 2014). Drug and HIV risk among Latino immigrant day laborers in Baltimore.