Assistant Professor
Community Health and Prevention, Drexel FIRST Program
lav53@drexel.edu
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Degrees

PhD, Health Behavior and Health Promotion, University of Arizona
MPH, University of Arizona
BA, University of Arizona

Bio

Luis Arturo Valdez, PhD, MPH, is an assistant professor in the Department of Community Health & Prevention. Valdez joined the Dornsife School of Public Health as part of the Drexel FIRST (Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation) program.

Dr. Valdez is a first-generation Mexican immigrant of Yaqui and Opata lineage raised and trained in the US-Mexico borderlands. They earned their PhD in Health Behavior & Health Promotion with a minor in Epidemiology at the University of Arizona in 2017.

Dr. Valdez uses community-led mixed-methods approaches to understand and address the impact of systemic processes (i.e., racism & patriarchy) that perpetuate health inequities in historically marginalized populations. The work that they facilitate is community-centered and works from a foundational aim to build mutually-beneficial and ethical research collaborations with communities that foster critical consciousness, capacity building, and collective advocacy.

Currently, Dr. Valdez is interested in understanding how individual-level characteristics interact with macro-level factors to influence the health-related behaviors of Latino men. Broadly, his research examines a range of behaviors related to alcohol and substance misuse, chronic stress, healthy food choice, and physical activity, with an emphasis on developing and testing scalable, multilevel, culturally-, regionally-, and gender-responsive interventions that intentionally consider the heterogeneity that exists in distinct Latinx communities in the U.S. Dr. Valdez approaches their work with an intersectional gender-transformative framework that disentangles the complex roots of inequity in aim of reshaping unequal power relations toward health equity.

Research Interests

• Gender-Transformative Interventions
• Patriarchy and Health
• Men’s Health
• Participatory Action Research
• Latinx Health Disparities
• Substance Use
• Nutrition and Physical Activity
• Stress

Publications

Mullany A., Barbieri, M., Smith, S., Gubrium, A., Valdez, LA. (2022) “Who is really our enemy?: Internalized racism in the Puerto Rican diaspora and the role of political education within community health intervention.” Social Science & Medicine (in press)

Garcia, DO., Valdez, LA., Aceves, B., Bell, ML., Rabe, BA., Villavicencio, EA., Marrero, DG., Melton, F., Hooker, SP., (2022) mHealth-Supported Gender- and Culturally-Sensitive Weight Loss Intervention for Hispanic Men With Overweight and Obesity: Single-Arm Pilot Study. JMIR Formative Research (in press)

Valdez, LA., Mullany, A., Barbieri, M., Gubrium, A., (2022) Uncovering historical legacies to contextualize health inequities in Latino men: An expansion of the minority stress model” Frontiers In Sociology section Gender, Sex, and Sexualities.

Robinson D., Valdez LA., Buchanan, DA., (2020). "The role of work in gender identity, stress and health in low-income, middle-aged African-American men." Health Promotion International. [PMID: 33370427].

Valdez LA, Garcia DO, “Hispanic Male Recruitment into Weight Management Research: Evaluating Content Messaging Strategies, Experimental Findings, and Practical Implications." International Quarterly of Community Health Education.

Mullany A., Valdez L., Gubrium A., Buchanan D., “Precarious work, health, and African-American men: A qualitative study on perceptions and experiences.” International Journal of Health Services. [PMID: 33327847].

Valdez L., “A Culturally and Gender Responsive Stress and Chronic Disease Prevention Intervention for Low/No-Income African American Men: The MOCHA Moving Forward Randomized Control Trial Protocol.” Contemporary Clinical Trials. [PMID: 33301990].

Griffith, D.M., Jaeger, E.C., Valdez, L., Schaefer Solle, N., Garcia, D.O., & Alexander, L. (2020). Developing a “Tailor Made” precision lifestyle medicine intervention for weight control among middle-aged Latino men. Ethnicity & Disease, 30 (supplement 1). [PMID: 32269462].

Salerno Valdez, E., Skobic, I., Valdez, L., O Garcia, D., Korchmaros, J., Stevens, S., ... & Carvajal, S. (2020). Youth participatory action research for youth substance use prevention: a systematic review. Substance Use & Misuse, 55(2), 314-328. [PMID: 31596160].

Salerno Valdez, E., Valdez, L., Korchmaros, J., Garcia, D. O., Stevens, S., Sabo, S., & Carvajal, S. (2020). Socioenvironmental risk factors for adolescent marijuana use in a United States-Mexico border community. American Journal of Health Promotion. [PMID: 32458691].

Bea, J. W., Kinslow, B., Valdez, L., Yazzie, E., Curley, P., Dalgai, S., & Schwartz, A. L. (2020). Perceptions of cancer causes, prevention, and treatment among Navajo cancer survivors. Journal of Cancer Education, 35(3), 493-500. [PMID: 30756323].

de Heer, H. D., Bea, J., Kinslow, B., Thuraisingam, R., Valdez, L., Yazzie, E., & Schwartz, A. L. (2019). Development of a Culturally Relevant Physical Activity Intervention for Navajo Cancer Survivors. Collaborations: American Journal of Community-based Research and Practice, 2(1), 15.

Garcia DO., Valdez LA., Aceves BA., Bell ML., Humphrey K., Hingle M., McEwen M., & Hooker SP. (2019) A Gender- and Culturally-Sensitive Weight Loss Intervention for Hispanic Men: Results from The ANIMO Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial. Health Education and Behavior. [PMID: 31216875].

Valdez LA, Morrill K, Griffith D, Lindberg N, Hooker SP & Garcia DO. (2019) Mexican-Origin Male Perspectives of Health Behaviors Related to Physical Activity. American Journal of Men’s Health [doi: 10.1177/1557988319834122] [PMID: 3089068]

Valdez LA, Garcia DO. Ruiz J, Oren E, Carvajal S. (2019). Understanding the Social and Cultural Contexts of Alcohol Use in Hispanic Men: A Qualitative Study. Health Education and Behavior. [PMID: 30755045]

Valdez LA, Garcia DO. Ruiz J, Oren E, Carvajal S. (2019). Exploring Structural, Sociolcultural, and Individual Barriers to Alcohol Abuse Treatment Seeking Behaviors of Hispanic Men. American Journal of Men’s Health. [PMID: 30051746]

Bea JW, de Heer H, Valdez L, Yazzie E, Kinslow B, Lee M, Nez P, Dalgai S, Schwartz A, (2018). Physical Activity Among Navajo Cancer Survivors, A Qualitative Study. American Indian and Alaskan Native Mental Health Research. [PMID: 29889948]

Garcia D.O., Morrill K.E., Aceves B., Valdez L.A., Rabe B.A., Bell M.L., Hakim I.A., Martinez J.A., & Thomson C.A. (2018) Feasibility and Acceptability of a Beverage Intervention for Hispanic Adults: Results from a Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial. Public Health Nutrition. [PMID: 29889948]

See Dr. Valdez's complete list of publications on Google Scholar