Carmen R. Valdez

Biography

Dr. Carmen R. Valdez is joining the faculty at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work and Population Health, Dell Medical School, in July of 2018 as Associate Professor and Senior Community-Based Participatory Researcher. Prior to this appointment, she was Associate Professor in the Department of Counseling Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW), where she worked for 12 years. At UW she led the Latino Equity Collaborative (LEC), an advisory board of community and academic partners that leverages social capital, community experience, and university research and resources to address educational and health equity for Latinos in Madison and across the state. As part of the LEC, Dr. Valdez secured funding to collaborate with the University of Wisconsin’s Office of Community Relations, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, and Cooperative Educational Service Agencies to conduct an evaluation in five regions of the state of Wisconsin. The evaluation examined the formal and informal roles of language aides in urban and rural schools as they bridge between Latina/o immigrant families and schools.

Dr. Valdez has a special interest in understanding the role of social policy, neighborhood, and family factors on immigrant health, as well as developing community-based, family-focused interventions for Latino immigrant families. At UW, she led a dissemination and implementation project to scale up her family-focused intervention for Latina/o families affected by maternal depression, Fortalezas Familiares (Family Strengths), to schools in Milwaukee and Madison. She also led a case study of four families in Arizona, affected by Senate Bill 1070 and the current immigration climate.

Dr. Valdez is also interested in mentoring health equity scholars and junior faculty of color. At UW, she was the faculty director of the Advancing Health Equity and Diversity (AHEAD) program, of the Collaborative Center for Health Equity, UW Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. In this role, she led five affiliated AHEAD Program Directors in developing a ‘community of scholarship’ in which authentic leadership, research career development, and networking opportunities were offered to early to mid-career health equity scholars at UW. She looks forward to continuing and expanding these endeavors at the University of Texas at Austin.