Lourdes A. Báezconde-Garbanati, PhD, MPH
Education
Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
M.P.H. University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
M.A. Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
Research Interests
Her work focuses on community based research and public health initiatives that explore the role of culture in health behaviors with an emphasis on the elimination of health disparities. She develops and tests innovative interventions that help modify cultural and social norm factors for cancer and tobacco prevention at the community level. She teaches courses on gender and ethnic minority health, culture and health, and on community organizing and mobilization for health locally and globally.
Dr. Baezconde-Garbanati has been instrumental in developing and testing the feasibility of developing policies to eliminate exposure to secondhand smoke among Hispanic/Latinos and American Indians that impact the public’s health. For 17 years she served as a member of or director of the California Hispanic/Latino Tobacco Education Network one of several priority population networks focusing on tobacco control, including capacity building and technical assistance and training. Dr. Baezconde-Garbanati has worked in communicating the latest science for the development of informed policy and community based decision making. She has been a Co-Investigator in the Tobacco Use Research Center at USC (TTURC); and of the USC Transdisciplinary Research Center on Cancer (TREC) helping to disseminate the latest scientific discoveries on the relationship between cancer and obesity to community groups, including promotores de salud (lay health care workers), She is the Associate Director of the Center of Excellence for Minority Youth (OMYLA).