Julia Lechuga

Julia Lechuga received her doctorate degree in Health Psychology from the University of Texas at El Paso. She completed her post doctorate degree at the Center for AIDS Intervention Research (CAIR) at the Medical College of Wisconsin. During her post doctorate, she worked as part of an interdisciplinary team developing and testing behavior change interventions to promote sexual and reproductive health and reduce infectious disease risk in Latinx populations with substance use disorder.

Between 2018 and 2021, she was a visiting professor fellow at the University of California San Francisco where she acquired expertise in innovative methodologies to optimize bio behavioral interventions to promote linkage into care among people who inject drugs living with HIV.

• PhD in Health Psychology, University of Texas at El Paso

The goal of Dr. Lechuga's research is to contribute to ameliorate the profound ethnic health disparities that characterize the U.S. health care system by developing, implementing and testing theory informed behavior change interventions that are culturally appropriate for Latinx populations. An important piece of her research is to highlight the social, cultural, and psychological factors that interventions should target to maximize their effectiveness. Dr. Lechuga employs a community based participatory research approach (CBPR), which entails forging and sustaining strong partnerships with community based organizations to:

• Enhance the cultural appropriateness of the intervention
• Ensure the intervention addresses community needs
• Increase the capacity of partner organizations to conduct research and implement evidence based-practices
• Promote the translation of research to practice
• Enhance the sustainability of interventions