STIMHR Faculty Research Awards

UTSA faculty who are involved in mental-health research or are planning to pursue this type of research are annually invited to participate in the summer research awards program. The primary purpose of this award program is to help faculty develop competitive grant proposals to advance their program of research. Three research awards are made each summer. The awards provide summer salary for one month and one course release in the fall semester. At the end of the fall semester, each award recipient is expected to submit a grant proposal (minimum level of $50,000 a year).

The Advisory Committee will review applications for the awards and determine the recipients, with preference to junior faculty, although associate professors will also be given consideration. At the end of the summer, award recipients will submit progress reports and the Advisory Committee and the Program Director will provide feedback. At the end of the fall semester, the Advisory Committee and Director will review the grant proposals and provide feedback. Recipients will then be expected to submit their proposals to extramural granting agencies.

Michael R. Baumann, Ph.D.

"ACUTE STRESS RESPONSES IN HIGH RELIABILITY OCCUPATIONS"

Dr. Michael Baumann joined the UTSA faculty as an Assistant Professor of Psychology in 2001, the same year he completed his Ph.D. in Social and Organizational Psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research interests encompass decision making in groups and teams; performance (decision making in particular) under acute stress; and affect and cognition. Dr. Baumann has substantive applied research experience, having been involved with, among others, the Office of Naval Research project on training for crisis management and the Illinois Fire Service Institute, the latter in which he designed, conducted, and analyzed quasi-experiments to explore the relationships among training, uncertainty, and anxiety in acute stress situations. Similarly, he designed and submitted a grant proposal for studies to address the relationships between personality and genetics to neurological, immunological, and psychological responses to acute stress.

Dr. Baumann's proposed research study melds his primary lines of inquiry into acute stress and "high-reliability" occupations, which are those associated with some form of of crisis management, such as firefighters, police, and emergency medical personnel. While extant research in this area typically operationalizes the effect of individual differences on stress in terms of personality, he plans to examine situational, personality, and genetic influences on stress and stress responses - a concession toward recent research suggesting the importance of considering genetic differences in this context. Dr. Baumann's proposed project is of critical benefit to the community. Identifying factors that affect firefighters' reactions to stress is a first step to developing methods aimed at identifying and selecting applicants who are less likely to experience stress or are more resistant to the negative effects of stress on health and performance and will thereby perform better under acute stress. Likewise, the study is expected to help cultivate training methods to further enhance performance. Selecting the best applicants and keeping them healthy longer through preventative and after-action treatments will increase the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the fire department. In turn, this will reduce both the cost to the community in terms of property damage due to fires and the cost of replacing firefighters who leave the profession due to mental-health or physical problems.

Contact Information:

Office Phone: 210.458.5720
E-mail: michael.baumann@utsa.edu

K. Jill Fleuriet, Ph.D.

"THE PRENATAL PSYCHOSOCIAL ENVIRONMENT AMONG MEXICAN AND MEXICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN IN SOUTH TEXAS"

Dr. Jill Fleuriet received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Stanford University in 2003 and is currently an Assistant Professor and Graduate Advisor of Record in the UTSA Department of Anthropology. Originally trained in biological anthropology with an emphasis on evolutionary ecology, she became interested in medical anthropology early in her graduate career. Since joining UTSA in 2003, Dr. Fleuriet's research has centered on medically underserved populations along the U.S.-Mexico border and on issues of women's health and chronic illness. Broadly, she considers health and illness from a political-economic perspective while considering effects of transnationalism, biomedical hegemony, and identity on health and illness among  minorities, with an emphasis on praxis-oriented research. She has conducted research among the Kumiai and Paipai of northern Baja California, Mexico, as well as research and consulting among diverse Latino populations in San Diego, North Carolina, and South Texas. Dr. Fleuriet grew up in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and later returned to the Valley for her current research, which considers pregnancy and birth experiences of immigrant Latinas from Mexico from political, economic, and feminist perspectives.

Dr. Fleuriet's proposed research project is a largely qualitative study that will explore Mexican and Mexican-American women's psychosocial environment (i.e., acculturation, duration of stay in the U.S.) during and after pregnancy, including prenatal and birth experiences as well as knowledge and attitudes toward prenatal care, pregnancy, motherhood, and gender relations. Through previous pilot studies, Dr. Fleuriet employed the use of narrative ethnography, in which she conducted 32 in-depth, open-ended interviews and two focus groups. Textual data gleaned through these conversations will be transcribed and analyzed in order to address the cultural knowledge informing the prenatal psychosocial environment among Mexican and Mexican-American women in South Texas. The study will also comprise a survey component, comprising a battery of self-report psychosocial measures. Through her research, Dr. Fleuriet hopes to promote culturally sensitive, mental-health/psychosocial interventions among medically underserved pregnant Hispanic women in South Texas, as such interventions have demonstrated improved birth outcomes among Hispanic and other medically underserved women. Since Hispanics have some of the lowest utilization and access rates to health care, and Hispanic children have the lowest rates of regular health care among minority groups, a culturally relevant prenatal care program that emphasizes maternal mental health for medically underserved women could potentially integrate more Hispanic women and children into existing physical and mental-health services.

Melinda Morris Villagran, Ph.D.

"COMMUNICATING TO IMPROVE THE MENTAL HEALTH OF LATINO CANCER PATIENTS IN SOUTH TEXAS"

In addition to serving as an Assistant Professor of Communication at UTSA, Dr. Villagran is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Texas Heath Science Center in San Antonio. She received her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Oklahoma in 2001. Prior to coming to UTSA, she taught at Texas State University-San Marcos, the University of Oklahoma, and Oklahoma City University. At the University of Oklahoma, she was the Academic Coordinator for the Department of Defense Joint Course in Communication. Dr. Villagran's research program investigates messages in organizational and health care interactions. In particular, she explores the intersections among organizational communication, health issues, and cognition in order to better understand the processes affecting patients and health care consumers. Currently, she is conducting research on communicating about cancer among cancer patients, health care provider organizations, family members, and survivors. Having authored or co-authored of over 25 journal articles, books, and book chapters, she also continues to pursue her interest in the area of innovative methods for teaching and researching communication.

Dr. Villagran's proposed research study will explore various cultural factors related to communicating about mental health by Hispanic cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment. Openly communicating with others about issues such as fear and anxiety about death, changes in body image, self esteem, and social roles, as well as medical bills and interruption of life plans, has the potential to diminish the perceived isolation of a cancer patient. To this extent, communication entailing mental-health issues affecting cancer patients can impact patient decision-making and quality of life after a cancer diagnosis. Cultural values that will be examined in this study include language barriers, fatalism, personalismo, and familiasm, all of which will be analyzed to assess their impact on, and how they are impacted by, cancer patients' mental-health concerns as they undergo radiation therapy treatment for cancer. Anticipated results will be used to launch a comprehensive approach to addressing potential threats and opportunities for mental-health and oncology professionals seeking to reduce the incidence and severity of depression and other mental-health problems in the face of cancer involving this especially vulnerable population. The overall premise for Dr. Villagran's study is inspired by both the disproportionate burden of cancer among Latinos and the underlying communication and mental-health issues that may exist, and, in greater view, the crucial need to address mental-health issues within the Hispanic population in South Texas.