UTEP Welcomes Harvard Fellows
Last Updated on April 06, 2018 at 12:00 AM
Originally published April 06, 2018
By Laura L. Acosta
UTEP Communications
Twelve environmental health fellows from universities and government agencies across the United States spent their spring break at The University of Texas at El Paso learning about critical health challenges facing vulnerable populations along the United States-Mexico border.
UTEP hosted the JPB Environmental Health Fellows’ final workshop from March 12-15, 2018. The three-and-a-half year fellowship was established in 2014 with Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health to promote a new generation of environmental health scholars committed to comprehensive approaches to address health disparities in disadvantaged communities.
Hector A. Olvera, Ph.D., associate professor and director of research in UTEP’s School of Nursing (SON), was awarded the JPB fellowship in 2014. He jumped at the opportunity to introduce the other JPB fellows to the borderland.
“I have the privilege of working in my community, and as academics that’s not always the case,” Olvera told the scholars before they headed to the Housing Authority of the City of El Paso (HACEP). “My objective today is to share with you my community, my institution, how that impacts my work and how my work and the work of others at UTEP has impacted the people in this community.”
For more than three years, JPB Fellows have engaged in research, scholarship, leadership and communication activities and mentorships designed to enhance existing expertise and also to expand scholarship into novel domains. Fellows received funding up to $350,000 to conduct research on social and environmental factors that contribute to health disparities.
UTEP School of Nursing Dean Elias Provencio-Vasquez, Ph.D., said the fellowship not only helped Olvera expand his research focus, but it also led to collaborations between the SON and the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of New Mexico. It also created opportunities for research collaborations between the nursing school and UTEP’s colleges.
“For us this fellowship supported Hector and our School of Nursing in many ways,” Provencio-Vasquez said. “The mentorship Hector received furthered the development of his program of research. It leveraged funds received through the fellowship for the SON to build a new Biobehavioral Research Laboratory, establish a collaboration with Harvard School of Public Health and supported launching two new research programs.”
Olvera started the Biobehavioral Research Laboratory (BbRL) in 2016, which specializes in human subject and population health disparities research focused on the biological, behavioral and environmental pathways that affect health and wellness.
The BbRL’s current research projects include the UTEP Stress Study and the Nursing Engagement and Wellness Study, or NEWS.
Approximately 1,500 students from across campus participated in the UTEP Stress Study, which looked at the impact of childhood adversity on health. Olvera also recruited 11 high school students from the Alpha Youth Leadership Academy (AYLA) he established to act as the lead investigators in a substudy about overcoming the adverse consequences of growing up in disadvantaged communities.
Olvera plans to follow up the UTEP Stress study with the UTEP Happiness Study in fall 2018, which will examine positive healthy environments, positive social factors and resilience.
He also hopes to enlist 1,000 UTEP nursing students to participate in NEWS. Over the past two years, Olvera has recruited 300 incoming UTEP nursing students for the study that looks at how stress, poor diet, exposure to chemicals and air pollution affect the health and well-being of nurses.
“I come from an exposure sciences and environmental engineering background, and I’m interested in the intersection of the environment and social factors,” said Olvera, who holds a Ph.D. in environmental science and engineering from UTEP. “The last four years in the fellowship, I’ve been training and expanding my capacity into the areas of psychology and sociology, to be able to tackle broader and more relevant questions. It has allowed me to make my program far more interdisciplinary and more impactful.”
Olvera also has developed new interdisciplinary collaborations with other JPB fellows, including Allison Appleton, assistant professor of epidemiology at State University of New York at Albany. Olvera, Appleton, Christina H. Fuller, Annie Belcourt and Laura D. Kubzansky recently published a paper about the Integrated Socio-Enviornmental Model (ISEM) of health and well-being in Springer International Publishing's journal "Current Environmental Health Reports."
Appleton joined Olvera and the other scholars on a tour of the UTEP campus, including the Border Biomedical Research Center in the College of Science. They also traveled to the Village of Vinton, where UTEP students conducted a Health Impact Assessment project under the direction of UTEP’s Center for Environmental Resource Management. The JPB fellows also met with Alpha Youth Leadership Academy graduates who talked about their experience in the academy.
“I really enjoyed my visit to El Paso and UTEP – the research infrastructure and commitment to student success was very evident and impressive,” said Appleton, who has credited the JPB Fellowship with allowing her to better engage with her community and enhancing the breadth and depth of her research.
College of Health Sciences Dean Shafik Dharamsi, Ph.D., encouraged the scholars to immerse themselves in the communities in which they work in order to truly effect change.
“When I talk to students, I talk about the power of education and how it is not just about being able to see the world differently but to be in the world differently,” Dharamsi said. “Try to be explorers; don’t just focus on how (you) can see the world differently but be in the world.”
The nomination call for the next cohort of JPB Environment Health Fellows is anticipated to begin in May 2018. For more information about the selection process, click here.