GARCIA PEREZ, MARIA HILDA

Dr. Hilda García-Pérez is a researcher and director of the Nogales Unit of El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (Mexico). She was trained as a sociologist and demographer in Mexico and in 2016 received a Ph.D. in epidemiology from the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan (UMICH). Her research and teaching focuses on the social determinants of health in urban areas of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and is driven by her strong commitment to understand the complex factors that explain adolescents and women’s health-seeking behavior and health outcomes through transcultural, and community-based approaches. Her early academic work (1995) includes a multisite survey of adolescent substance use in fourth northern Mexican border cities. Her research career as a graduate student in the UMICH focused on women’s sexual and reproductive health. As a fellow of Fogarty International Center, both in a training program in Mexico and in a doctoral program in the UMICH, she analyzed emerging topics on sexual and reproductive health in Mexican population. As part of this study she designed a representative population-based survey in Mexico to study four gynecological morbidities and their associated risk factors. Her current research evaluates the efficacy of school-based programs to prevent substance-abuse among adolescents, as well as the emotional impact of immigration policies on high-school students in U.S.-Mexico border cities.

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