National Health Education Group Honors UTEP Researcher

Last Updated on June 04, 2018 at 12:00 AM

Originally published June 04, 2018

By UC Staff

UTEP Communications

The Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) recently honored Patricia M. Juárez-Carrillo, Ph.D., coordinator of UTEP’s Center for Inter-American and Border Studies (CIBS), and four colleagues as authors of the 2018 SOPHE Sarah Mazelis Paper of the Year.

The article, “Applying Learning Theory to Safety and Health Training for Hispanic Immigrant Dairy Workers,” appeared in the July 2017 issue of the society’s peer-reviewed Health Promotion Practice Journal.

The SOPHE, an independent professional group of health educators, academics and education researchers, recognized the writers during the SOPHE Awards Ceremony as part of the society’s 69th annual conference in April 2018 at the Hyatt Regency in Columbus, Ohio.

Juárez-Carrillo said she was honored with the award and to have worked with an extraordinary team from the research labs to the dairy farms. The team wrote about its efforts to design safety and health curriculum for immigrant dairy workers to increase their knowledge, encourage safe behavior and reduce worker communication inequalities to prevent occupational injuries or diseases.

“This publication examines the application of learning theories, which are generally used in academia, to train Hispanic/Latino workers about safety and health prevention, with a strong emphasis on cultural and empowering approaches,” she said. “Significant learning theory is one of the backbone mechanisms universities embrace to prepare students for life-learning experiences.”

Kathleen Roe, DrPH, the journal’s editor in chief, lauded the study’s scope, and said it provided a blueprint for other researchers to follow.

“The critical importance of bilingual, bicultural research teams (and, by extension, professional pipelines, training programs, work opportunities) is so clear,” Roe wrote in a congratulatory note to Juárez-Carrillo.

The article’s other authors are Amy K. Liebman with the Migrant Clinicians Network in Salisbury, Maryland; Iris Anne C. Reyes and Yurany V. Ninco Sánchez, with the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation in Marshfield, Wisconsin; and Matthew C. Keifer, M.D., Puget Sound Medical Center, Seattle, Washington.

The article is being translated into Spanish and will be available in December 2018 on the journal’s website.