As a health psychologist, Felipe González Castro, Ph.D., conducts research among youth and adults to understand how best to prevent their involvement in unhealthy behaviors such as drug abuse, smoking, and a poor diet.
A pioneer in the field since 1981, Castro was among the first to teach health psychology as an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Thirty years later, Castro is a professor and director of the Health Psychology Program at UTEP, a position he assumed last year, where he focuses his research on a systemic analysis of stress, coping and resilience as influences on adaptive health behaviors in Latino and other racial and ethnic populations.
His research examines cognitive, affective and behavioral factors that are important in preventing and treating addictive behaviors and substance abuse disorders, as well as other lifestyle disorders, including type 2 diabetes.
“Prevention science is an important field. It emphasizes the adage that prevention is better than treatment,” said Castro, who was born in Mexico City. In the 1950s, when he was 3 years old, he and his family came to the United States as legal immigrants, via El Paso. “If you can intervene early in a disease or disorder, then you can prevent unhealthy or maladaptive behaviors and their consequences. We use scientific knowledge from carefully conducted research to identify what works, and then develop intervention programs to make it happen.”
In May, Castro reached another career milestone when he became the first Mexican-American chosen as president-elect for the Society for Prevention Research (SPR). He will lead the organization, which is dedicated to advancing scientific investigation on the etiology and prevention of social, physical and mental health problems, for two years beginning in June 2013.
“Dr. Castro will be an outstanding president for SPR and an excellent academic ambassador from UTEP to that organization,” said Pat Witherspoon, Ph.D., dean of UTEP’s College of Liberal Arts. “A leader in his discipline, as well as a new leader at UTEP, he embodies the kind of scholar who guides universities as they become national research universities. We are very proud to have him in the College of Liberal Arts as an important change agent.”
As SPR president, one of his goals is to find ways to tailor prevention interventions that are culturally relevant for special populations, such as Latinos and other racial or ethnic minorities. According to Castro, a program designed for one population does not necessarily work for all groups.
“If I design an intervention program for New York City and I bring it to El Paso, there may be some differences in the population and in the environment, and these differences create the need for intervention adaptation, which involves the application of science, although tailoring it to work at the local level,” he said. “This requires additional efforts in order to get all the puzzle pieces to work together.”
Castro has been passionate about developing interventions that promote resilience, or a person’s ability to cope effectively when facing adversity and other challenging life experiences.
While he was a professor in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University, Castro was co-investigator of a multi-year study (2005-09) that examined the effects of resilience on individuals and community residents. Under this larger study, Castro examined the resilience-related characteristics of drug users, community residents, and Hispanic leaders.
Researchers interviewed 216 drug users, 44 community residents and 43 leaders from Arizona. The leaders included state senators, representatives of congress, professors and business and community leaders.
The drug users were found to have low resilience relative to the leaders, based in part on significant differences in their coping skills in response to a difficult life problem. Leaders exhibited higher resilience, particularly as this involves skills and efforts involving ongoing problem solving as their type of coping.
“We learned about the deep structure of resilience in this study, where the goal was to obtain the requisite knowledge to design and implement an intervention that will aid in developing resilience skills and capabilities,” Castro said. “If we know what the key ingredients are, we can design an intervention that can be preventive or restorative, depending upon the ingredients that go into it. However, it is also important to develop a culturally-tailored intervention that promotes resilience, particularly among high-risk groups. For children who are at risk for becoming drug users or going to prison, we need to find a way to develop and nurture their skills and their social environment, as these will increase their resilience.”
Eddie Castañeda, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at UTEP, said Castro’s academic and research background brings a focus on so many issues directly relevant to El Paso’s population.
“His research touches upon prevention issues such as diabetes, breast cancer and substance abuse, among other health-related issues,” Castañeda said. “His expertise will facilitate cross-disciplinary collaborations, engage the community and enhance the University’s capacity to train our students to give back to the community by helping to pipeline them to advanced careers in research and service.”
One of Castro’s priorities is to train a new generation of research investigators who will be strong scientists with a sensitivity to cultural issues.
One of those future researchers is John A. Sauceda, a Ph.D. candidate in UTEP’s psychology program who is working with Castro to analyze research data from a completed drug relapse prevention project in which researchers examined the predictors of relapse by using multilevel statistical modeling.
“I really enjoy and appreciate our meetings, where we can sit and brainstorm anything from broad theoretical issues to the most specific statistical detail about how to best analyze a hypothesis,” said Sauceda. “You can tell [Castro] views the mentoring of young scientists as an important part of the program, because the best mentors are the ones you aspire to be like.”