GALVESTON – A researcher in the School of Nursing at the University of Texas Medical Branch is the recipient of the largest grant ever awarded to a member of the nursing faculty.
Professor Roberta “Jeanne” Ruiz has received a grant totaling nearly $2.2 million from the National Institute of Nursing Research to find a solution to the “acculturation paradox” affecting young female immigrants from Mexico.
The grant will support an ongoing research project titled “Psychoneuroimmunology: Preterm Birth in Hispanics.”
Ruiz’s research project started in 2001, before she came to UTMB. The grant will allow her to continue her work during the next four years. The National Institute of Nursing Research is a part of the National Institutes of Health. Ruiz conducts her research in the School of Nursing’s Center for Nursing Research and Evaluation.
The grant will allow Ruiz and her research team to explore what about acculturation leads to changes in the mothers’ mental and physical health that contributes to the risk of premature births.
According to the acculturation paradox, the more acculturated Hispanic women become, the worse their health outcomes, especially in delivering premature and low birth weight babies. The novelty of Ruiz’s research is that it is finding the endocrine and immune markers related to acculturation predicting preterm birth.
“It includes psychological, sociological, endocrine, immune and genetic measures in an innovative way to examine risk,” she said. “We are looking at what it is about getting integrated into the mainstream American culture that is detrimental to your health. What we found was that the English-speakers have a very detrimental physiologic pathway, and their risk increases three or four times that of the Spanish-speakers.”
Elizabeth Reifsnider, associate dean for research and director of the Center for Nursing Research and Evaluation, said: “Since Hispanics comprise the largest minority group in the United States, rates of prematurity will only increase if this issue is not solved. Dr. Ruiz’s work is breaking new ground in the connection of social and environmental factors with health outcomes.”
Ruiz said: “The goal in the next year to a year-and-a-half is to get enough data that I can begin to build the interventions. I have a pretty strong idea that there’s serious stuff happening with the family, and I want to help them to problem-solve and to cope better. It doesn’t sound like it would have an impact on your biological health, but it does.”
