UHC Faculty and Affiliates Featured in Latest Exel Magazine
September 16, 2025
Drexel University’s biennial magazine spotlighting innovative research carried out across the school, Exel, was recently published for 2025. We’re honored to have the work of UHC faculty and affiliates highlighted in this issue, including the work of faculty member and Community Engagement Core Co-Lead Mariana Lazo and affiliate faculty member Ana Martínez-Donate included as a feature in the issue! We’ve compiled a roundup of these articles below:
Promotoras, or lay health workers who help Latino families connect to support systems, are crucial in breaking cultural taboos and reducing stigma around mental health in immigrant communities. In 2019 (and rebooted in 2022), Lazo and Martínez-Donate were instrumental in organizing the CRiSOL MENTE program, a community multi-level intervention aimed at improving mental health among Latinos. Short for Comunidades Resilientes, Sostenibles y Organizados for Lideres (“Cultivating Resilient and Strong Opinion Leaders”), the program and its nonprofit partners — most notably, the Philadelphia AIDS Consortium and the Esperanza Health Center, along with a coalition formed and led by the Drexel team called the Latino Health Collective — connect promotoras to culturally appropriate care and resources, all of which they leverage to help their communities and create better health outcomes. The results are already manifesting, learn more from the link below!
“I am hoping that other organizations see the value of community health workers and embrace this model,” says Lazo. “There is so much commitment. Our promotoras have such big hearts, and they want to help their peers. They have seen people struggle, and they understand how much the community needs them. They very much want to help others. …If you hire a community health worker, they will make it happen.”
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A study published in Nature Cities led by Kephart, featuring co-authors from the UHC and our partners at SALURBAL, revealed that low-income neighborhoods in Latin America are more likely to see the adverse effects of flooding from climate change. We’re thrilled that this study was spotlighted in Exel! Read more below.
“The message is clear that policymakers must give careful attention to poorer neighborhoods that may be both at higher risk for flooding and have less infrastructure to be able to cope with the effects,” says Kephart.
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Affiliates
If your grandparents went to college, it may slow down biological aging for you and your DNA – that's one fascinating result from a study led by UHC-Affiliated Faculty Member Agus Surachman, spotlighted in Exel. Read more below.
“In the United States, we tend to overemphasize individual responsibility when it comes to health — and there’s a lot of blaming people for their poor health,” says lead author Agus Surachman, [...] I hope this helps us give more grace and compassion to ourselves and our communities.”
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Overall, children in foster care are two to five times more likely to have Autism Spectrum Disorder or Intellectual Disabilities than other children nationwide. To further research this, Affiliate Faculty Member Lindsay Shea led a first-of-its-kind study using Medicaid data, because Medicaid is the largest insurer for both youth with Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities and those in foster care. Exel spotlighted this research, available from the link below.
“Understanding the involvement of youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the foster care system is an important first step in identifying priorities for needed policy and program change,” says Shea, Associate Professor and director of the Policy and Analytics Center at the Autism Institute.
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