Shannon Sanchez-Youngman, PhD

Biography

Dr. Sanchez-Youngman is a community based participatory researcher with expertise in Latino mental health disparities intervention research and health equity policy. She has over 20 years of experience developing community health interventions aimed at reducing social and health disparities among economically marginalized groups and racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Dr. Sanchez-Youngman seeks to bridge the gap between social science theories and methods with multi-level health intervention research.

She received her doctorate at the University of New Mexico in Political Science. She currently is the Associate Director for Participatory Research and Evaluation at the Center for Participatory Research and is the Doctoral Fellowship Director for the Center for Social Policy at UNM. She was a doctoral fellow at the Robert Wood Johnson Center for Health Policy from 2010-2015.

Areas of Specialty

• Community Health
• Health Policy

Key Publications

• Nina Wallerstein, John Oetzel, Shannon Sanchez-Youngman, S., Blake Boursaw., Elizabeth Dickson, Sara Kastelic (2020). “Engage for Equity: A Long-Term Study of Community Based Participatory Research and Community Engaged Research Practices and Outcomes.” Health Education and Behavior, 47(3): 380-390.
• Shannon Sanchez Youngman, Gabriel R. Sanchez, Maria Livaudais, Naomi Stulberg, and Kate Cartwright. “Mental Health Parity in New Mexico: Results from the 2018 New Mexico: Mental Health Parity Study.” Report of the UNM Center for Social Policy of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, January, 2019.
• Shannon Sanchez-Youngman, Victoria Sanchez and Marissa Elias. “Insider Perspectives on the Integration of Health Equity into Public Health Practice in New Mexico.” (1-89). Report Submitted to the National Health Equity Collaborative and Kellogg Foundation May 23, 2018.
• Myra Parker, Nina Wallerstein, Bonnie Duran, Bonnie; Maya Magarati, Ellen Burgess; Shannon Sanchez- Youngman, May 2019. Engage for Equity: Development of Community-based Participatory Research Tools.” Health Education and Behavior, 47(3).
• Kasim Ortiz, Jacob Nash, Logan Shea, Justin Garoutte, Shannon Sanchez-Youngman, and Nina Wallerstein. 2020. “Partnerships, Processes, and Outcomes: A Health Equity–Focused Scoping Meta-Review of Community-Engaged Scholarship.” Annual Review of Public Health (41).
• Nina Wallerstein, Michael Muhammad, Shannon Sanchez Youngman, Lorenda Belone, Bonnie Duran. 2019. “Power Dynamics in Community Based Participatory Research: A Multi-Case Study Analysis Partnering Contexts, Histories and Practices.” Health Education and Behavior 46 (1).
• John Oetzel, Nina Wallerstein, Bonnie Duran, Shannon Sanchez-Youngman, Tung Nguyen, Kent Woo, Jun Wang, Amy Schultz, Keawe‘aimouku Kaholokula, Barbara Israel and Margarita Alegria. 2018. “Impact of Participatory Health Research: A Test of the Community Based Participatory Research Model.” Biomedical Research International 1.
• Carlos Devia, Elizabeth Baker, Shannon Sanchez-Youngman, Ellen Barnidge, Maxine Golub, Freda Motton, Michael Muhammad, Charmaine Ruddock, Belinda Vicuña, Nina Wallerstein. 2017. “Advancing System and Policy Changes for Social and Racial Justice: Comparing a Rural and Urban and Rural Community Based Participatory Research Partnership in the U.S.” International Journal for Equity in Health 16(17).
• John Sanchez, Gabriel Sanchez, Shannon Sanchez-Youngman, Edward Vargas, and Vickie Ybarra. 2015. “Race as Lived Experience: The Impact of Multidimensional Measures of Race/Ethnicity on the Self-Reported Health Status of Latinos.” Dubois Review 12(2): 340-373.

Research

In her currently funded NIH work, Dr. Sanchez-Youngman extends dominant behavioral-clinical interventions to examine how more nuanced social-cultural risks such as public stigma and marginalization impact suicide among rural, Latino youth. She employs innovative digital story intervention(s) with rural Latino youth to promote collective empowerment resiliency related to suicidality. Her work develops intergenerational strategies that tests the impact of youth-led policy input to reduce suicide disparities on promoting new ideas for suicide prevention among grassroots youth, adult stakeholders, and policy makers.

Another aspect of her research has been to understand how formal and informal collaborative governance designs influence the effectiveness of inter-sectoral health initiatives to advance health equity outcomes. Dr. Sanchez-Youngman examines these factors in multiple settings including national, federally funded community-academic health intervention partnerships, among rural and urban hospitals, and among public-private partnerships between state and regional public health bureaucracies and locally contracted health councils comprised of city and county level service providers, advocates and local policy makers. Dr. Sanchez-Youngman has published articles in International Journal for Equity in Health, Dubois Review, Health Education and Behavior, Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, and the American Political Science Review.

• Principle Investigator. “Addressing the Social-Structural Determinants of Mental Health and Suicide through Digital Storytelling and Youth Advocacy for Rural, Latino Youth.”
  National Institute of Health, 2019-2021
• Principle Investigator. “Leveraging Public Health Institutions to Promote Racial and Health Equity in New Mexico.” National Collaborative for Health Equity, 2016-2018.
• Co-Investigator. “Advancing CBPR Practice through a Collective Reflection and Measurement Toolkit.” National Institute of Health, 2015-Present
• Co-Investigator. “ADVANCE at UNM: Institute for Diversity and Equity Across STEM (IDEAS).” National Science Foundation, 2020-Present

Courses Taught

• Introduction to Population Health
• Interventions