Michael Montoya (Director)
Montoya approaches undisciplinary and (neo)applied research imaginaries with the commitment to epistemological and cultural critique. Informed by sociocultural studies of technosciences and by enduring theoretical concerns with human variation writ large, Montoya’s research blends the speculative, the applied, the material and semiotic, with the contingent concerns with solving not merely characterizing - disparate distributions of inequality, suffering, and injustice. Consequently, projects that emanate from Montoya’s lab are attempts at creating situated active accounts of human problems that are locatable within stratified fields of unequal power relations. Visit his faculty page.
Victoria Lowerson
Victoria is a PhD student in the Planning, Policy and Design department in the School of Social Ecology at UCI. She is interested in the interrelationship between the social and built enviroment with health as well as community based research approaches to address root causes of health inequalities. Focusing on food justice during her masters of public health, Victoria has worked on CKP's wellness policy project as well as helping in data collection in the Valencia Soccer Study. She is currently working on the Santa Ana Building Healthy Communities initiative as a Community Scholar of UC Irvine's Community Outreach Partnership Center.
Erin Kent
Erin received her PhD in Environmental Health, Science, and Policy with a Concentration in Epidemiology and Public Health from the School of Social Ecology at UC Irvine in 2010. Her dissertation project examined socioeconomic disparities in survival and survivorship in adolescents and young adults with cancer, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Erin's research interests fall mainly in social epidemiology and community health, with an emphasis in community-partnered research. She has worked with both Professor Montoya and the Community Knowledge Project since its inception, including projects with the Valencia Task Force and St. Jude's Medical Center in Fullerton, the California Endowment Building Healthy Communities in Central Long Beach, and the Community Outreach Partnership Center at UC Irvine. She is currently working as a Cancer Prevention Fellow at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.
Diego Solares
Diego graduated with Honors from the University of California, Irvine in 2008 with a degree in International Studies. After studying and working in Brazil and Thailand, he went on to serve as a Clinton Fellow in India and a consultant for the Pan American Health Organization. In 2010, he finished a year-long Global Health Corps Fellowship with Partners In Health in Boston is now pursuing a Master of Public Health at the Department of Global Health of the University of Washington and a Master of Public Policy at the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government. Diego is committed to reducing health disparities among most-at-risk populations and advancing the view of health as a human right.
Cristina Bejarano
Cristina completed her MA in anthropology with an emphasis in medical anthropology at California State University Long Beach in 2007. Her thesis, entitled "From Compliance to Collaboration: Alternatives for Trainings in Health Care," addresses the implementation of the cultural competency policy at a southern California hospital. She gathered data from her involvement on the hospital’s cultural competency committee, interviews with interpreters, Latino parents of children on dialysis, and an employee survey. Her study resulted in an alternative training curriculum for health care practitioners.
Bradley Jong
Bradley graduated from UC Irvine in 2009 with a degree in Social Ecology. During his undergraduate career, he worked with Professor Montoya during the 2008 summer to address childhood obesity and the Fullerton Unified School District's lunch program. These efforts produced a research paper that was then presented to the Valencia Task Force. He plans to enlist with the Peace Corps for 2 years before enrolling in a Masters in Public Health program specializing in community health education. With his MPH, Bradley hopes to work for a nonprofit agency in hopes of improving health education, specifically in minority communities, to increase awareness of health topics such as HIV/AIDS and nutrition education. Bradley plans to utilize his background in public health and social ecology to develop and implement innovative programs that will look to the local community to tailor his presentations to best benefit the target audience.
Lauren Bieniek
Lauren is currently a Penn State student studying social inequalities, human rights issues, and social movements. In the future she plans on pursuing a master’s degree in public health and/or peace studies. Lauren hopes to do work both globally and locally to combat issues of inequality, specifically in health and women’s issues. This summer for the CKP Lauren is researching empowerment and community capacity, specifically as they apply to health issues. Empowerment is the attainment of power and authority in an individual’s life, and community capacity refers to the assets of a community that allow it to actively address social problems. Each of these phenomena gives both individuals and communities the ability to take control over their lives and take action for change, leading to less stressful and healthier living.
Teresa Ortega
Teresa is a public history/public service major at Stanford University. She first worked for the CKP during the summer of 2009 when she participated in the Santa Ana Building Healthy Communities initiative and coordinated the Madison Park Neighborhood Association’s seventh annual walk-a-thon and health fair. This summer she rejoins us as she pursues the independent project of researching and writing a social history of Santa Ana, her hometown. Her research will then be incorporated into curriculum of a Santa Ana public high school Mexican-American history class. Teresa is excited to be part of the CKP because of its commitment to facilitating community-led initiatives and fostering alternative spaces and solutions.
Neva Lundy
Neva will be a senior at the University of Notre Dame and is a major in anthropology, with an emphasis in medical anthropology. Her interest in medical anthropology comes from working with HIV/TB patients in Cambodia as well as independent research in Uganda on the social infrastructure surrounding multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis. Neva also has a strong interest in community development and spent a semester abroad in Uganda focusing on development studies. She has also worked with micro-finance and agro-forestry NGO's in Tanzania, Burundi and the Dominican Republic studying community development and capacity building. This summer Neva will be working with Professor Montoya on both the Santa Ana Building Healthy Communities project as well as the study on the Valencia Youth Soccer League.
Mojgan (“Mo”) Sami
Mo is a PhD student in the UC Irvine School of Social Ecology studying the nexus between public health, urban planning and community development. She has more than twenty years of international experience working with communities in a variety of capacities; such as junior youth empowerment programs in the United States, community needs assessments in Uganda, participatory monitoring and evaluation in Ghana, training facilitators in the Philippines, conducting community based health research with seniors in Japan, etc. The motivating force in her life is to interact with scholarship and communities with the principles of justice, equity and equality.
Connie McGuire
Connie is a doctoral candidate in socio-cultural anthropology who is interested in violence prevention, policy-making processes, and Latin America. Connie has worked professionally conducting ethnographic research with so-called Central American gang members as well as with policymakers in the Washington DC, Mexico and Central America. Her dissertation, "Transnationalizing Gangs in the Americas: Expertise, Advocacy, and the Politics of Policymaking" examines how gangs are increasingly understood as a transnational phenomenon in need of a transnational solution. Dr. Michael Montoya is her advisor, and she has collaborated with the CKP in its work with Santa Ana Building Healthy Communities project.
Christina Penfield
Christina is a student at the UCI School of Medicine. She has been involved in a project that investigates the strengths and limitations of incorporating community health promoters into a modern clinical setting. She has worked alongside health promoters from Latino Health Access in Santa Ana to Chiapas, Mexico to better understand their goals and perspectives.
Jessica Arzate
Jessica is an anthropology student at UC Irvine. She worked with Professor Montoya for the Inter-Disciplinary Summer Undergraduate Research Experience fellowship. The name of her project was "The National Children's Study and the Applicability of Community Based Participatory Action Research Methodology”, which involved compiling a literature review on the CBPAR and determining whether this type of methodology would benefit the National Children's Study, which she was a student researcher for in 2009.
Caitlin Fouratt
Caitlin completed her BA in Spanish language and literature at Villanova University in 2004. Caitlin was a Fulbright Scholar to Costa Rica (2004-2005), where she studied Nicaraguan migration and xenophobia in the country. She completed her MPhil in Latin American Studies at Cambridge University in 2006. Her master’s thesis focused on the experiences of Nicaraguan women living in squatter settlements in Costa Rica. After completing her degree, Caitlin returned to Costa Rica to work as a research consultant and study abroad program coordinator at the International Center for Sustainable Human Development. Her research interests involve Central American migration, gender and families, and she has worked with community organizations on a number of issues including migration laws, domestic workers and banana workers' rights. Caitlin is currently developing her dissertation project on Nicaraguan transnational families, and in 2010-2011 she will co-facilitate a UCI graduate student reading group on transnational families.
Kristen Gamble
Kristen Gamble is in her third year of a doctoral program in Social Ecology. With an undergraduate degree in Psychology, she has focused her research on social and behavioral aspects of energy conservation, natural disaster preparation, and community participation. Currently she is active in the Santa Ana Building Healthy Communities project where her role as a researcher provides support to the planning process with a focus on the inclusion of community knowledge. Kristen applies interdisciplinary frameworks and a diversity of methodological approaches to research topics in human equity and ecology.
Katia Sanchez
Katia is a second year medical student at UC Irvine and is in the PRIME-LC (Program in Medical Education for the Latino Community) and plans to pursue a master’s degree in Public Health. She is passionate about increasing access and quality of healthcare to communities in need. She is currently involved with the Santa Ana Building Healthy Communities project.
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