Dr. Mercedes Morales-Alemán has joined the College of Community Health Sciences as an assistant professor in the Department of Community and Rural Medicine and the Institute for Rural Health Research.
Morales-Alemán researches health disparities and health promotion among Latino populations in the southeastern United States through a community-based participatory lens.
She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Puerto Rico, and her master’s and doctoral degrees in ecological-community psychology from Michigan State University.
Morales-Alemán was a research fellow for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention. At the CDC, she studied the multi-level predictors of intimate partner violence and access to HIV services in ethnic minority communities at risk for or living with HIV and AIDS.
She recently completed a training fellowship in Preventive Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she studied the social determinants of sexual health and health care access among adolescent Latinas in the South.
“I look forward to contributing to the University’s mission of excellence in research, teaching and service and to the Institute’s mission of bringing the highest attainable standard of health to rural citizens,” she says.