Exchange between University of Illinois at Chicago and Universidad de Sevilla

During October-December 2017, CESPYD member Daniela Miranda was a visiting student at the University of Illinois at Chicago supervised by two minority advocacy experts, Professor Yolanda Suarez-Balcazar and Professor Fabricio Balcazar. This experience was enriching as it taught us about advocacy processes that a university-community based partnership have the capacity to do.

Currently, Dr. Suarez-Balcazar is implementing a project in partnership with a community based organization, who work directly with Latino families that face health care access barriers and a worse health status than their counterparts, similar to those barriers Roma communities face in Sevilla. In order to identify these barriers, an adapted version of community asset mapping was designed by Daniela and Professor Suarez-Balcazar’s research team to be implemented.