Background: First-generation Mexican American
Interests: Psychometrics; effects of cultural factors, gender, and race/ethnicity on health behavior; Latino health; development, evaluation, and dissemination of interventions for health risk behaviors.
Focus: Yessenia Castro is a scientist dedicated to conducting research that improves the health of people from disadvantaged groups, her research focuses on the development, cultural adaptation, evaluation of behavioral interventions for smoking and alcohol use among Latino populations and understanding how sociocultural factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, and acculturation influence health behavior. Alongside her commitment to health disparities research, she is deeply motivated to mentor future researchers of health disparities and future service providers to disadvantaged groups. She believes strongly that significant advancements in the elimination of health disparities necessitates greater participation of people from historically underrepresented and disadvantaged groups in the nation’s pool of scientific practitioners and researchers.
Fun-fact: Prof. Castro loves streaming episodes of The Golden Girls, attending Crossfit, and hanging out with her dog, Coco, and cats, Shadow and Jericho.