The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy is on its way in developing leaders from the social sciences who will conduct research to impact health policy, said Robert Valdez, executive director. “Social scientists can play a role in contributing to healthy communities because health policy has little to do with medical care or disease. The cross-disciplinary approach helps create decision-makers capable of addressing issues, establishing policies,” he said.
Photo: Sean Bruna
Developing a cadre of Latino and Native American experts who can work in the health policy arena is a goal of the RWJF Center. “We need to bring in a new voice for health care, restructure the systems affecting communities,” Valdez said.
The first group of RWJF fellows is now in its second year. Sean Bruna received his master’s in anthropology and considered law before coming to UNM’s anthropology doctoral program. Born to a Mexican mother and Cuban father, Bruna was born in Mexico and spent formative years in Colombia and Venezuela before his family moved to El Paso, Texas, where he finds himself again, now conducting field work for his dissertation. Following a meeting with Ysleta del Sur tribal elders, he knew that addressing a health issue – in this case the high incidence of diabetes – was more than just developing an exercise program, educating about eating habits or creating a walking trail.
“Because of the training I got from the RWJ partnership, I knew more about policy. I knew I had to determine who owns the research, be respectful of sacred knowledge, receive publish approvals before I could officially begin the research,” Bruna said.
Bruna said he became aware of the RWJ program through work in a Research Service Learning program. “Charlene Porsild [RWJC program manager] was involved in the community garden project and told me about the program. It has provided me with both critical funding and training, as well as a cohort of students to work with,” he said.
Andrea Lopez is also in her second year as a RWJF fellow. As a Ph.D. student emphasizing ethnology, cultural and medical anthropology in the urban United States, she is interested in a controversial program. She wants to establish a medically supervised safe injection program for drug users in San Francisco.
“I want to address a need for community based intervention for injection drug users, recognizing there is strong public opinion about it,” she said, adding that she knows she will need to work with public health officials and planners, the “user” community and multiple community stakeholders. Lopez comes to the issue out of previous work with women substance abusers who had trouble accessing services.
“We are helping to educate leaders who will conduct research that affects the real world,” Valdez said.