Nina Wallerstein, M.P.H., Dr.P.H.

Director of the Masters in Public Health Program

Office: Family Practice Center, Rm. 145

Office Hours: By appointment.

Work Phone: 272-4173
                    
E-mail: nwallerstein@salud.unm.edu

Nina Wallerstein, Dr. PH is Professor and Director of the Masters in Public Health Program in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. For 30 years, she has adapted the empowerment-education ideas of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire to:

• adult education in the U.S.
  
• worker health-and-safety education
  
• adolescent alcohol and substance-abuse prevention
  
• youth-leadership development
  
• community development

Dr.Wallerstein has been developing participatory research methodologies and empowerment intervention research since the early 1980s, with her latest co-edited book covering these fields, Community-Based Participatory Research for Health. She has worked both in North American research and Latin American contexts, in healthy city participatory evaluations,in adolescent and women’s health intervention research, and in community capacity development. She has been the PI for an NIAAA-funded youth empowerment intervention, for youth policy and women’s empowerment programs, and currently, for the NIAAA-funded Southwest Addictions Research Group, a Training Center whose purpose is to reduce alcohol-related disparities among Native American and Hispanic communities. Since 1999, she has been funded by CDC and NARCH/NIH grants to work in collaboration with Native American tribes, developing understandings and assessment tools for tribal community capacity, tribal public health infrastructure, and measures of social capital. Her recent NARCH III funding is to develop a culturally-based family-elder intervention with two tribes to reduce substance abuse and enhance quality of life.
 

Languages:

Fluency in Spanish and Portuguese. Reading ability in French. Limited Hebrew.

Education:

Dr.P.H. School of Public Health/Health Education (Doctorate with Distinction)
1985 88 University of California, Berkeley

M.P.H. Health Education/Occupational Health
1979 80 University of California, Berkeley

A.B. Economics (PHI BETA KAPPA)
1974 76 University of California, Berkeley

1971 73 Community Education
University of California, Santa Cruz

Last updated November 28, 2006