Announcing 2022 HSI Seed Grant Awardees

Recipients

Felina Cordova-Marks, Assistant Professor, Health Promotion Sciences, Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health; Jennifer Erdrich, Assistant Professor, Surgery, College of Medicine – Tucson

Abstract

American Indian/Alaska Natives (AI/AN) face greater disparities in breast cancer treatment outcomes than Non-Hispanic White Women. Historically, AI/AN females receiving medical care have been coerced and or forcibly treated with varying levels of consent occurring/not occurring. The goal of this project is to determine the cancer treatment decision making process, including the process for consenting to treatment (such as mastectomy), and overall treatment experience of Pascua Yaqui breast cancer patients, survivors, and the role that their caregivers play in the treatment decision making process (N=60). This project utilizes a Community Based Participatory Research and mixed-methods approach, including a survey and semi-structured interviews with participants. Outcomes include increasing the capacity of UA Indigenous student researchers, reports for the Pascua Tribe on how their breast cancer patients are being consented for cancer treatment, as well as the types of cancer treatment they are choosing, and developing a culturally responsive health promotion tool for Pascua Yaqui breast cancer survivors, patients, and their caregivers that will facilitate patient understanding of the consent process for cancer treatment and surgical cancer treatment.

Recipients

Anna Josephson, Assistant Professor, Agricultural and Resource Economics, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; Na Zuo, Assistant Professor of Practice, Agricultural and Resource Economics, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; Katherine Speirs, Assistant Specialist, Early Childhood/Childhood Development, Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Abstract

The proposed project investigates the dynamics of food insecurity on college campuses and, in particular, the heterogeneous effects among BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) students. Food insecurity is an issue of racial equity. Through structural racism, marginalized individuals and families have dealt with poverty and food insecurity at a higher rate than non-Hispanic white individuals and families. Hispanic and BIPOC students begin their time at UA facing an increased likelihood of food insecurity - and are more likely to experience food insecurity as students. When students have trouble securing sufficient food, they have trouble completing their education. As Hispanic and BIPOC students already face lower rates of retention and graduation at UA, food insecurity is yet another hurdle which they must overcome in order to obtain their education. We seek to contribute to the Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) mission of the UA through the Project Aims presented in Box 1 of the proposal. We seek to understand the constraints in ensuring food security faced by students at the UA, to make recommendations to alleviate these constraints, and to quantify the return on investment to UA of alleviating these constraints for students.

Recipients

Jacqueline Barrios, Assistant Professor, Public and Applied Humanities, College of Humanities with collaborators: Ana Maria Alvarez, Founder and Director, Contra Tiempo Activist Dance Theater; Leigh-Anna Hidalgo, Assistant Professor, Department of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, Yale University

Abstract

I propose to pilot a program for arts and activism residencies at UArizona, specifically within the Public and Applied (PAH) Humanities core curriculum, as part of a larger goal to cultivate QT BIPOC student access to humanities and arts fields. The “HSI-PAH Artist-in-Residence Program: Arts Praxis, Servingness & the Public Humanities” will bring two teaching artists to collaboratively design separate 3-week units as part of PAH 200, "Introduction to Applied and Public Humanities." This grant will fund teaching artist visits to Tucson where they will provide hands-on immersive instruction to students on methods drawn from their own practice, from choreographic labs to comic-book based graphic design. A larger public engagement for the wider UArizona community (artist talk, performance, showing or demo) will be planned as a part of the residencies, one of which will feature a showcase of student work from the project.

Recipients

Regina Deil-Amen, Professor, Educational Policy Studies and Practice, College of Education, Ashley Domínguez Lopez, Assistant Professor, Teaching Learning and Sociocultural Studies, College of Education; Julio Cammarota, Professor, Teaching Learning and Sociocultural Studies, College of Education; Amelia Kraehe, Associate Professor, School of Art, College of Fine Arts

Abstract

The proposed project advances and broadens a cross-disciplinary curriculum to provide students at two HSI universities –The University of Arizona (UArizona) and The University of Puerto Rico, Cayey (UPR, Cayey) with the critical and creative tools needed to understand how BIPOC students are affected by and respond to the crises around them. This project is made possible by the close collaboration between faculty within the Colleges of Education and Fine Arts and inter-institutional collaborations between UArizona and UPR, Cayey. Education and Cayey will offer (TLS 418/518 and INTD 4116) Participatory Action Research courses with the long term plan to expand to Fine Arts. While these universities share a federal designation as Hispanic-serving Institutions, each offers a distinct cultural and curricular context. Thus, lessons learned from implementing the Creative Resistance course sequence across two HSI institutions will be especially useful to other Hispanic and Minority Serving Institutions exploring experiential curricular and cross-disciplinary approaches to servingness. Students from each campus will work together on PAR projects addressing problems affecting BIPOC students within vastly different cultural contexts. These collaboratives represent vital student networks across contexts where they can support each other in their educational and community praxis and pursuit of graduate school.

Recipients

Daniel Martinez, Associate Professor, Sociology, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences; David Garcia, Associate Professor, Health Promotion Sciences, Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health; Adriana Maldonado, Postdoctoral Research Associate I, Health Promotion Sciences, Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health

Abstract

Background: Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) play a crucial role in recruiting, retaining, and graduating Latinx students via the provision of social and academic support, culturally relevant coursework, and an environment of “servingness” that facilitates mentoring and training Latinx students and engaging them in culturally relevant research projects. One critical issue affecting many Latinx students and their families is blocked access to medical care, which is a social determinant of health that contributes to disparities evidenced in immigrant, ethnic minority, and low-income populations.

Methods: “Salud Sin Fronteras” expands existing qualitative research frameworks on healthcare barriers by employing a “life-course” approach to examine the associations between early life health experiences and medical and lay care seeking practices post-migration. To assess these relationships, our research team developed a novel quantitative survey instrument that is being administered to 300 Mexican-origin adults in southern Arizona.

Outcomes & Significance: Salud Sin Fronteras will train Latinx students in quantitative research skills, enhance and support racial and cultural ways of knowing, and help extend the HSI mission across the UArizona campus. Moreover, outcomes will expand our understanding of the binational implications of blocked medical care access that can inform health interventions designed to promote wellness and care access.

Recipients

Megan Carney, Associate Professor, School of Anthropology, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences; Laurel E Bellante, Assistant Professor of Practice, School of Geography, Development, and Environment, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Abstract

The Future of Food and Social Justice foregrounds youth storytelling to advance a more equitable, socially and racially just vision for the future of food. Using feminist and participatory methods to engage structurally marginalized youth in southern Arizona, this project will enrich UA’s HSI designation, generate a template for community engagement of interest and potential benefit to other MSIs, and also make important contributions to scholarship advancing the struggles of QT BIPOC. We aim to engage and train at least 30 youth from structurally marginalized backgrounds from across southern Arizona in the project activities and to solicit at least 15 stories on the future of food and social justice in the form of: a short story, essay or statement; audio or video recordings; and brief interviews. Results of the project will be disseminated through digital newsletters, social media outlets, op-eds (locally and nationally), and peer-reviewed publications, while making important contributions to theory on archival activism and decolonial knowledge production as well as interventions to right to food and food studies. Participants of the project will also play an active role in archiving and sharing stories back with their communities.