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UTEP Faculty Member to Serve on Council for Texas Transgender Health

Last Updated on November 13, 2018 at 12:00 AM

Originally published November 13, 2018

By UC Staff

UTEP Communications

Oralia Loza, Ph.D., UTEP associate professor of public health sciences, has been selected to serve on the TransFORWARD Research Engagement Advisory Council for TransFORWARD: A Transgender-Powered Research Collaborative in Texas.

Oralia Loza, Ph.D., UTEP associate professor of public health sciences, has been selected to serve on the TransFORWARD Research Engagement Advisory Council for TransFORWARD: A Transgender-Powered Research Collaborative in Texas.
Oralia Loza, Ph.D., UTEP associate professor of public health sciences, has been selected to serve on the TransFORWARD Research Engagement Advisory Council for TransFORWARD: A Transgender-Powered Research Collaborative in Texas.

Established in 2018 by the Equality Texas Foundation and the Texas Health Institute, TransFORWARD is a two-year research capacity-building project to improve the lives and health of transgender Texans. The project will connect transgender Texans with medical researchers. 

The Research Engagement Advisory Council will lead TransFORWARD’s collaborative network development. This shared governance council will include stakeholders from eight regions with roughly half of the regional members from the transgender community or family members.

Council members will participate in several activities such as developing a regional research engagement plan. They also will provide suggestions for projects, funding, research and education opportunities, as well as initiate important connections in the transgender and health communities. 

The first council meeting will take place Nov. 28, 2018, in Austin.

Loza has been a faculty member in UTEP’s College of Health Sciences since 2010. Her research interests include substance abuse and risk factors for HIV/STIs (sexually transmitted infections) and Hepatitis C virus among high-risk populations, including sexual and gender minorities, transgender women, migrants and other marginalized individuals. Her work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, book chapters and abstracts.

Loza holds a joint doctoral degree in public health and epidemiology from the University of California, San Diego and San Diego State University. 

TransFORWARD is funded through a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award (EA #10671).

For more information: https://transforward.texashealthinstitute.org/programs/pcori/.