Sarah Najera

PhD Student

Sarah Nicole Najera is a first-year doctoral student in the Health Psychology program at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). She plans to complete her master’s coursework and thesis under Clinical Psychology. She received a B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Sociology from UTEP in the Spring of 2019. Generally, her research interests revolve around under investigated influences on alcohol related health disparities, drinking behavior, and recovery from alcohol use problems or disorders. Sarah recently completed a senior honors thesis which utilized a qualitative approach to investigate the lived experience of alcohol withdrawal during recover from an alcohol use disorder amongst patients of an inpatient rehabilitation facility. The project aimed to uncover psychological, cultural, social, and perhaps spiritual aspects of the experience of alcohol withdrawal and how patience make sense of and draw meaning from the experience. Sarah is currently assisting with a wide array of projects within LAHDR, such as an investigation on the categorization of metaphors used between interviewers and patients during brief motivational interviews and how they may relate to the effectiveness of said interviews. She hopes to establish a research agenda which furthers the work from her senior thesis project.