In 2014, a public health professor at San Diego State University led the largest research study ever conducted on Hispanic and Latino health. Gregory Talavera, Ph.D. was the principal investigator for the study funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health. (Photo courtesy: SDSU News Center).
The Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL) Data Book: A Report to the Communities” included data on more than 16,000 Hispanic/Latino adults living in San Diego, Chicago, Miami, and the Bronx who self-identified as being of Central American, Cuban, Dominican, Mexican, Puerto Rican or South American heritage.
Since the original exams, study participants have been contacted annually to check on how their health might have changed, particularly their cardiovascular health.
Eight years later, San Diego State University (SDSU) News Center reports on how mentorship is thriving at the South Bay Latino Research Center (SBLRC) in Chula Vista. Hernandez Mozo is one of many budding researchers who have gotten their start at the center.
According to SDSU News, Dr. Talavera’s Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL) is at the heart of the center.
With more than a dozen active grants, the HCHS/SOL study is now collecting data from the participants for the third study visit, which will allow the researchers to get a long-term perspective on their cardiometabolic health. An offshoot of the study, the Hispanic Community Children’s Health Study/Study of Latino Youth, looks at cardiometabolic risk factors in children of the original HCHS/SOL participants, and another follows babies born between their parents’ first and second visit.
Greg Talavera was the youngest of three sons born to Mexican-American parents in Los Angeles, As a teen, he worked alongside his older brother to educate and organize farmworkers. A 1991 alumnus of SDS U’s Graduate School of Public Health, he is now one of the school’s most prolific faculty researchers and a member of an SDSU center for integrated research on problems that intersect the disciplines of public health, psychology, sociology, and exercise and nutritional sciences.
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