lourdes baezconde-garbanati

Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati is an Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine.

What kind of research do you conduct?

I conduct community based prevention research on cancer and tobacco control, among other health areas. Much of my work focuses on testing innovative, culturally competent, language and literacy level appropriate interventions with Latinos and other priority populations. I am particularly interested in the medically underserved, women's issues and adolescent health. I am also involved in program planning, development, evaluation and dissemination of promising prevention programs, and interventions with policy and advocacy relevance. The aim is to assess their impact and conduct community outreach activities that will facilitate translation of prevention research findings into community practice and will form the base for informed decision making at a policy level.

In a typical semester, how many undergraduates do you work with? What kind of research activities do the undergraduate students perform?

In a typical semester I work with some 30 undergraduates who participate in my class on the main campus, HP 420 on Gender and Ethnic Minority Health. In addition, I usually work closely with one or two students in our Alhambra offices who are interested in our research and learning how to work in culturally competent ways with priority populations. These students usually have the opportunity of participating in a variety of community-based activities.

In the past undergraduate students have worked in projects tied to the Hispanic/Latino Tobacco Education Network (www.latinotobaccoeducation.com), a social resources and adolescent smoking research project, our Community Outreach and Education Core, part of the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center at USC, and in the Cancer Information Service (CIS) (1-800-4-Cancer).Undergraduates are formally integrated into the various teams working in my projects and become important elements in the puzzle seeking to better understand how to best reach priority populations and the medically underserved.

What are some of your recent undergraduate projects?

Undergraduate students have been involved in conducting an inventory of research data from our community-based tobacco program, have participated in library research and contributed to papers for publication. They have also worked on bibliographic research projects of their own interest that help advance the knowledge base for any of our programs. They have helped to set up focus groups, assisted with putting together a protocol for the USC Internal Review Board, dealing the protection of human subjects, have collected data on breast cancer and tobacco control, entered data and helped analyze data for the evaluation
of our programs and of community-based mini-grants we have funded. Students have compiled and reviewed educational materials, evaluated them for cultural appropriateness and literacy level for specific population groups.

Some interested in policy work have an opportunity of being involved in advocacy and policy working with our information and education visits program to legislators and local community leaders. They can also engage in the testing of innovative advocacy
campaigns, working with Hispanic Chambers of Commerce and educating community leaders on tobacco control. Students can also participate in activities to assess the feasibility of passing local ordinances and voluntary policies that restrict exposure to second hand smoke in apartment buildings and other public areas. Some students have helped put together fact sheets for dissemination, and have had an opportunity of working on an electronic and paper newsletter for community outreach. Students have also been involved in the development and maintenance of our website on tobacco control, especially in links reaching 18-24 year olds, and in assessing their effectiveness. Undergraduate students have helped review and evaluate films and materials on local health issues and international health.

They have worked on telephone surveys and other projects dealing with barriers to breast cancer screening and rescreening of Latinas. Some have also been involved with activities of members of our affiliate Networks (i.e, African American, American
Indian and Asian/Pacific Islander tobacco education networks).