Diana R. Romero, Ph.D.
Hunter College, City University of New York
Junior Investigator, Vulnerable Populations
Project Title: Health, Hardship, and Race/Ethnicity in Vulnerable Families: A Multifactorial Examination of the Fragile Families Dataset
"I believe that the New Connections grant has had a positive impact on my professional development in three major ways. Given RWJF's reputation, my institution's response to my receiving the award was very favorable; it is considered a significant achievement upon which promotion and other related decisions may be based. It has helped to support some of my time, which has allowed me to devote more to research activities. Additionally, the professional development conferences that the New Connections program has held for grantees have been very helpful in different aspects of professional development, including fostering collaborations, making presentations, writing manuscripts and approaches to seeking additional funding."
Project Description
Romero's Health & Hardship study examines the relationship of social factors and health to better understand how they come together to create vulnerable populations and to identify mechanisms through which health improvements can be made at individual, community and policy levels--a multilevel approach to addressing poor health and social conditions.
The Fragile Families data is well-suited for research relevant to vulnerable populations. It has yielded much information regarding marital decision-making, social/instrumental support and paternal involvement.
Yet, we need to better understand the combined role of physical and mental health, psychosocial factors, racial/ethnic identity and reproductive decision-making for poor and low-income women and children who suffer economic deprivation and social marginalization.
Romero's project uses a multilevel framework to examine how the relationship between distal variables (community and familial/social level) and proximate variables (individual level) affect maternal and child health outcomes. She is using secondary data analysis of the Fragile Families longitudinal data being conducted at the Urban Public Health Program at Hunter College, City University of New York.
Key variables included in the analyses are: physical and mental health status, health care access, economic well-being, material hardship, environmental factors, government program participation and demographic characteristics.
Biography
Diana R. Romero, Ph.D., is an associate professor of urban public health at Hunter College, City University of New York. Her research interests include domestic reproductive health and poverty policy; factors influencing fertility and family-formation decision-making; and, Latino health issues.
As project director for the Finding Common Ground project at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, she directed a collaborative research project, investigating the potential impact of welfare reform policies on the health of poor women and children. These activities involved quantitative and qualitative research methods at the national, state, community and clinical levels, as well as a project specifically focusing on the impact of these policies on native and immigrant Latina women.
Currently, she is working on several inter-related projects--one involving analysis of the Fragile Families longitudinal study, another using the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), and another involving key-informant interviews of state welfare administrators--all pertaining to the health and well-being of poor and low-income women in the context of welfare policy changes. Romero has served as an investigator on a multidisciplinary project focusing on the health of urban minority communities supported by the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities.
She serves on the board or has otherwise been actively involved with several outside organizations, including: the Reproductive Health Technologies Project (RHTP); the NYC Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS); the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE); the Public Health Association New York City (PHANYC); and, the American Public Health Association (APHA), both in the population, family planning, and reproductive health section as well as in the Latino Caucus. Romero's doctoral research pertained to contraceptive decision-making among Latina and African-American women in large, urban settings.
