I am a health disparities researcher with expertise in mixed methods research and populations marginalized due to medical mistrust and low health literacy. I am particularly interested in finding both health-system-based and community-based opportunities to engaging more effectively with these patients and populations to improve their health.
I received a career development award from NCI to study factors affecting mammography adherence in women with intellectual disabilities, and published several manuscripts related to the work that my team did. Our findings, that women with low health literacy seem to learn more from video-based health education, helped inform the development of a pilot intervention to disseminate information about breast cancer screening to women with intellectual disabilities. This research also informed other projects I pursued in quality of life for patients with aphasia and low-literacy health interventions for patients without intellectual disabilities.
After seven years serving as the medical director of a large primary care clinic for diverse underserved patients in Pawtucket, RI, I returned to a research career at Brown. My current funded work is in two areas: 1) a series of projects aimed at optimizing the uptake of the newer diabetes therapies in urban Latinx patients, partnering with Progreso Latino and funded by the Advance-CTR; and 2) a constellation of mixed-methods projects exploring the health behavior and health engagement of patients with a history of trauma and PTSD, funded by Brown's STAR COBRE.
