Deborah Salvo, PhD (WU-CDTR) and Carrie Howell, PhD (UAB DRC) recently received a Collaborative National DRC/CDTR Pilot and Feasibility award for their project: “Context matters: harnessing the CDTR/DRC network to examine the influence of community-level factors and of the COVID-19 pandemic on diabetes-related behaviors in emerging Latino communities.”
Dr. Salvo and Howell will lead a novel, 12-month mixed-methods pilot study addressing a critical gap evidence on the social determinants of health and of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in emerging Latino communities.
The team will document the change in community-level factors experienced by new Latino immigrants that establish residence in Missouri (MO) and Alabama (AL), two non-traditionally Latino immigrant-receiving states, and examine how these major contextual changes influence diabetes-related behaviors. They will further explore how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted these communities.
Salvo and Howell’s long-term goal is to inform contextually relevant interventions to address the disparities in diabetes prevention and management that COVID-19 has exacerbated in these socially and geographically fragmented communities.
About the Collaborative National DRC/CDTR P&F Program: The Collaborative National DRC/CDTR Pilot and Feasibility Program is intended to foster collaborative efforts between investigators from two or more Diabetes Research Centers (DRCs) and/or Centers for Diabetes Translational Research (CDTRs) at different institutions.
About the Co-PIs: Dr. Deborah Salvo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the University of Texas Austin and Co-Director of the People, Health and Place Unit in the Prevention Research Center at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Carrie Howell is a Clinical Research Scientist in the Department of Medicine, Division of Preventive Medicine at the University of Alabama Birmingham.