This week we have Dr. Margarita Alegria, Ph.D. , she is the Director of the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research at Cambridge Health Alliance, and a full professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is also the first and only tenured Latina professor at Harvard University. We spoke with her about mental health issues, trends, challenges, and disparities in service delivery among the Hispanic population.
To listen to podcast CLICK HERE.
July 16th, 2009 at 5:12 am
Dear Latin Cast,
I received this podcast under the title, “The Latino Health Issue no one is talking about” and I have to say, that while I applaud the discussion and your work to inform people, that title is misleading.
I work for Dr. Rosa Gil, President and CEO of Comunilife and Dr. Gil has not only been talking about the exact same thing as Dr. Alegria, she has been doing so for 20 years. The non-profit Dr. Gil created, Comunilife, is dedicated to combating disparities in healthcare for minorities, especially those with chronic mental health problems and HIV/AIDS. Dr. Gil has launched new programs in 2008 called Life is Precious and Proyecto VIDA, both created to combat the issue of Latina Teenage Suicide, an epidemic that no one in the mainstream media was discussing until Dr. Gil started her media campaign on the issue in August of 2008. Dr. Gil has been interviewed by ABC, NBC, has been made New Yorker of the Week by NewsChannel, New York 1 and has been featured in articles and stories in several papers and magazines.
A Cuban immigrant, Dr. Gil has dedicacted her life to creating homes, hope and health for minorities in New York. Currently, Comunilife boasts housing programs in Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, New York as well as a mental health clinic dedicated to Dr. Gil’s Multicultural Relational Approach, the first diagnostic format based upon not only medical, but cultural and enviromental issues faced by clients.
I tell you this to take nothing away from Dr. Alegria or from the fine work that you are doing, but to let you know that there are other people out there doing the same thing and hoping to improve the world in the same manner as you are speaking of. Thank you for the fine work that you do and if you should want to ever speak with Dr. Gil and learn more about her 20 plus years of service to the Latino Community of New York and her health care innovations, please feel free to contact me at the email address above. Thank you again for joining this important discussion, please keep up the vital work.
Sincerely yours,
Adam Szczepanski
Development Manager
Comunilife, Inc.