Dr. Castañeda earned her PhD in Ecological-Community Psychology from Michigan State University while she spent three years conducting community-based partnership research at the University of California, San Diego Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her graduate training is in community-based participatory research (CBPR), mixed-methods, and evaluation science. She has almost 15 years of community-based research, evaluation, advocacy and outreach experience. Her research interests involve addressing health disparities by developing culturally tailored educational interventions targeting preventive services utilization, chronic disease management, and the promotion of health behaviors. She is currently an Affiliated Investigator at the Institute for Behavioral and Community Health (IBACH) and Research Assistant Professor in the Division of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences, Graduate School of Public Health at SDSU. She is Principal Investigator on community-academic partnership study focusing on breast cancer risk reduction and patient empowerment among San Ysidro Health Center Latina patients and Co-Investigator on several NIH-funded epidemiological and chronic disease intervention studies. She is also an Evaluator for several local and national non-profit organizations that focus on diabetes management and heart disease prevention. She has published more than 20 peer-reviewed articles related to her research program.
Email: scastaneda@mail.sdsu.edu
Current Research Project(s)
Publications
For an up to date publications list see Google Scholar