Periodically we’ll feature a faculty member from the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at The UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, the team behind SaludToday. Today it’s Patricia Chalela.

chalelaIHPR researcher Dr. Patricia “Pato” Chalela had always been interested in health. She enjoyed the subject in high school in her native Colombia, and she looked up to her sister who is a scientist skilled in biotechnology.

But her early career truly opened her eyes to public health needs.

As a social worker in late 1980s Colombia, Dr. Chalela witnessed the unnecessary suffering that a community can endure due to preventable disease. Later, while studying at the International Centre for Eye Health at the University of London, she became cognizant of different health disparities affecting developing countries in Africa and Asia and how to intervene with sometimes simple preventive strategies focused on education.

“That experience not only opened my horizons but convinced me even more of the critical importance of health promotion and disease prevention,” Dr. Chalela said.

Dr. Chalela went on to become a Pan American Health Organization-sponsored health promotion intern at the South Texas Health Research Center in San Antonio under Dr. Amelie Ramirez in 1992, and learned how theory-based health communication strategies could be tailored to change health behaviors among Latinos.

Read more here on the bottom on Page 2 about how Dr. Chalela has helped better the lives of Latinos.