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The San Diego Alzheimer's Disease Resource Center for Minority Aging Research (AD-RCMAR)
A partnership between UC San Diego and San Diego State University
FACULTY
Other faculty, who help make the San Diego AD-RCMAR possible, include:
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Assistant Professor
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Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health & Human Longevity Science, UC San Diego
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Dr. Al-Rousan is Co-Lead of the Community Liaison and Recruitment Core (CLRC) and is a SD AD-RCMAR Alumna. She is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Behavioral Medicine and a founding faculty member at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at UC San Diego. Her expertise is in researching health equity and chronic disease management in displaced and marginalized populations, including aging refugees and the unhoused, incarcerated, and frail mobile home dwellers. Much of her work has focused on revealing and addressing health disparities, with a focus on limited English proficiency (LEP) and refugee populations. Building upon training in epidemiology, global mental health, equity in brain health, and behavioral medicine, she developed a roadmap for the National Institute of Health to include displaced people in workforce development initiatives and increase the funding for refugee health research. She founded and is director for the Displacement and Health Research Center, the first to be largely comprised of displaced trainees, faculty, and staff committed to advancing health equity. Additionally, she co-leads the Population Research Scientific Methods Center at the Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute and is core faculty at the Center of Excellence on Health Equity. She is funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to develop a hypertension self-management intervention for refugees, collaborating with Family Health Centers of San Diego and Ethnic Community-Based Organizations (ECBOs). Dr. Al-Rousan’s CDC-funded research has led to the development of an evidence-based Provider Toolkit to screen for complex trauma in newcomers. She is also the recipient of the Atlantic Fellowship for Equity in Brain Health, a prestigious lifelong fellowship program based at the University of California San Francisco and run by the Rhodes Trust in Oxford, the United Kingdom. The fellowship connects multi-disciplinary leaders working on issues related to creating fairer, healthier and more inclusive societies.
Associate Director
SOL-INCA Lab, Department of Neurosciences, UC San Diego
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Dr. Guerrero is Co-Lead for the Community Liaison and Recruitment Core (CLRC). As an educator with over 15 years of experience in the health sciences, she brings an interdisciplinary social science background to her work in the AD-RCMAR. Her work in geriatrics and gerontology focuses on underserved populations, caregivers, and supporting the next generation of racial and ethnic minority investigators. Dr. Guerrero serves as the Associate Director of the Study of Latinos-Investigation of Neurocognitive Aging (SOL-INCA), a large, multi-site, prospective cohort study of diverse older Latinos. In this role, she provides administrative leadership, support and solutions in the engagement of Latino populations in research and clinical care specializing in Alzheiemr’s disease, including the development and implementation of training for direct care workers. She was the former MPI for the NIH Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research Coordinating Center at UCLA and served as an Associate Lead Evaluator for the NIH Diversity Consortium, Coordination and Evaluation Center. She also serves on the Community Science Partnership Board of the California Latino-Brain Health Registry, is a co-investigator for the HRSA-funded Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP) and is an External Advisory Board member of Drexel University’s NIH FIRST award.
Corinne McDaniels-Davidson, PhD, MPH, MCHES
Assistant Professor & Institute for Public Health Director
College of Health and Human Services & School of Public Health, San Diego State University
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Dr. McDaniels-Davidson is the Program Evaluator for the SD AD-RCMAR and member of the Leadership and Administrative Core (LAC). She is the Associate Director of Public Health Practice, Associate Professor of Health Promotion and Behavioral Science, and NIH FIRST (SDSU FUERTE Scholar at the SDSU School of Public Health. Her academic training in epidemiology and health promotion prepared her as a methodologist, able to apply a wide variety of tools to her research, evaluation, and community engagement. As Director of the SDSU Institute for Public Health, she oversees professional research scientists who design and implement community-engaged research, evaluation, education, and community outreach. These efforts are enhanced by collaborative partnerships with governmental and community organizations, with the goal of reducing health disparities and building organizational capacity. Dr. McDaniels also serves as the Evaluation Director of the Indian Health Council Native American Research Center on Health.
Associate Professor
Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health & Human Longevity Science, UC San Diego
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​Dr. Nguyen is Co-Lead of the Analysis Core and a RCMAR Alumna. She is Associate Professor at UC San Diego's Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science (HWSPH). She is a public health researcher with expertise in gerontology, resilient aging, advance care planning, qualitative/mixed methods and community engagement. She regularly applies both quantitative and qualitative approaches to her research and is highly skilled with qualitative methodologies, analyses, and use of software (e.g., Atlas.ti and NVivo) for analyses. Dr. Nguyen is currently the PI of a NIA K01 focused on cognitive health and health behaviors relevant to older adults living with HIV. She is also MPI of a NIA R21 that examines the health trajectories of older adults leaving Wisconsin prisons, and recently received funding to examine the readiness of community organizations to implement alcohol screening and brief interventions to older adults living with HIV.
Associate Professor and Division Head, Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
School of Public Health, San Diego State University
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​Dr. Parada is Co-Lead of the Analysis Core and an AD-RCMAR Scientist Alumnus. He is a tenured Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Head of the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the SDSU School of Public Health. He is also core faculty for the SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Public Health, is Voluntary Assistant Clinical Professor in the UC San Diego Department of Radiation Medicine & Applied Science, and Member of the UC San Diego Health Moores Cancer Center. Dr. Parada specializes in environmental epidemiology, cancer epidemiology, and aging epidemiology. Additionally, as co-investigator of the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCH/SOL) San Diego Field Center (PI, Dr. Linda Gallo), he is highly motivated to elucidate the causes of aging-related diseases including Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) among middle aged and older Hispanic/Latino adults. He has82 peer-reviewed publications, the majority which have leveraged data from observational case-control and prospective cohort studies and from randomized clinical trials Dr. Parada has statistical expertise in longitudinal approaches to data analysis, multilevel and mixed-effects modeling, latent variable methods, chemical mixtures analysis, and survey-weighted data analysis.
Associate Professor
Psychiatry, UC San Diego
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Dr. Sundermann is the Co-Lead of the Research Education Component (REC). She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego and is a cognitive neuroscientist with a focus on the influences of sex/gender in cognitive aging and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Her research delves into the biological underpinnings of the higher prevalence of AD in women, utilizing various data modalities including neuropsychological, genetic, biomarker, and neuroimaging data. Her research program strives to use sex differences and related endocrine mechanisms as a window into causal pathways and therapeutic targets for AD and to develop risk reduction and intervention strategies that are tailored to women versus men. Dr. Sundermann also investigates HIV-associated neurocognitive impairment and its intersection with age-related neurodegenerative disorders, aiming to disentangle their clinical and neuropathological characterization. Dr. Sundermann is dedicated to mentorship, particularly of early career scientists from underrepresented backgrounds, and is involved in both the SDSU Advancing Diversity in Aging Research (ADAR) and UCSD Mentorship for Advancing Diversity in Undergraduate Research on Aging (MADURA) programs.
Associate Professor
Psychiatry, UC San Diego
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Dr. Zlatar is Co-Lead of the Research Education Component (REC), member of the Leadership and Administrative Core (LAC) and an AD-RCMAR Scientist Alumna. She is also a core faculty member of the University of California San Diego’s Center for Wireless and Population Health Systems (CWPHS), as well as a member of the Consortium for Alzheimer’s Disease and Latino Studies (CADLAS), and an alumna of the inaugural class of the NIA-funded Institute on Methods and Protocols for Advancement of Clinical Trials in ADRD (IMPACT-AD). She is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego, and a neuropsychologist specializing in ADRD diagnosis with older Spanish-speaking adults. Her research program seeks to reduce ADRD risk by developing novel, free living, digital health interventions that target modifiable lifestyle factors such as physical activity and sedentary time, while investigating how they affect brain plasticity and cognition. Her research also focuses on early detection of ADRD in Latinx middle aged and older adults and helping to increase their representation in clinical research. As a co-leader of the Latino Core of the University of California San Diego’s Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, she has been involved in developing new community outreach programs based on research promotores networks to increase trust and genuine connection with the Latinx community of San Diego County to help grow their representation in clinical research studies.