Important Announcements and Events regarding our Faculty :
Dr. Fred Ernst, Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies and Research in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences (CSBS), invites faculty and students to visit the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website at http://ncmhd.nih.gov/ to read a “program spotlight” article about the research of Dr. Elena Bastida, Professor of Sociology in the CSBS. The College is proud and delighted to see Dr. Bastida’s research receive this level of recognition by NIH. Very few projects are highlighted in this fashion but it is not surprising because Dr. Bastida’s work on aging and health in the Rio Grande Valley is recognized internationally as a model for research and intervention in high risk minority populations.
The UTPA Department of Sociology is also involved in a large study on religion and health in collaboration with Dr. Neal Krause from The University of Michigan School of Public Health. Dr. Elena Bastida leads the study which is funded by a NIH NIA R01 grant. After initial qualitative work conducted in our region, the study will conduct a large survey throughout the five Southwester states. Data yielded from this effort will complement Dr. Krause’s national study on religion and health.
Recent Successful Grant Announcements:
- On March 1, 2008, the University of Texas-Pan American was named a partner university in the establishment of the Center of Excellence for Border Security and Immigration by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The center, spearheaded by The University of Arizona at Tucson, will be a consortium of 12 universities (with UTPA as one of the five lead institutions) that will share $15 million over the next six years to develop better models for understanding immigration, population dynamics, and immigration administration and enforcement. UTPA’s research is anchored to the Borderlife Research Project of Dr. Chad Richardson, professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology, who has developed a model utilizing student researchers to conduct research related to the distinct South Texas social and cultural environment. The economic value of the Borderlife Archive was recently appraised at $2 million.
- The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, recently awarded $ 300,000 to Drs. Su and Richardson for a three-year project. This Individual Investigator Research Project allows Drs. Su and Richardson to study the use of health care services in Mexico by the predominantly Latino population residing on the U.S. side of the U.S.-Mexico border region. The study seeks to identify factors at both individual and contextual levels that can explain cross-border health care seeking behavior. A survey will be conducted to analyze the use of health care services in Mexico by U.S. residents, as well as to collect basic demographic and socioeconomic data regarding the use and non-use of cross-border health care services by border residents.