The focus of my research is on cultural variation in the experience of caregiving for persons with developmental disabilities and mental illness. Caregivers from communities of color face many challenges but also have exceptional coping resources. In addition, my research investigates how the coping resources of caregivers mediate and moderate stress, how they can be supported, and how they can help in our overall understanding of stress and coping.  I am also interested in investigating how race, ethnicity and poverty interact with the caregiving context and how these interactions impact the well-being of caregivers of color and their families.

My initial work involved an investigation of Puerto Rican mothers of adults with mental retardation. A major focus of this study was to understand the cultural value of familism as a protective factor for Puerto Rican mothers.  I have also compared caregiving experiences of the Puerto Rican mothers to other groups. Subsequently, I worked with Dr. Marsha Seltzer and recruited a Latino sample to her study, Adolescents and Adults with Autism; and with Dr. Jan Greenberg to recruit a Latino and African American sample to his study on Aging Families of adults with schizophrenia.  These studies gave us many opportunities for cross-cultural analyses of family caregiving processes.

Currently I am working on two projects: Latino Families of Children on the Autism Spectrum, and Health Education of Latina Mothers of Children with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.  The focus of the autism study is on understanding the experience of Latino family members who have a child with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD).  Autism is being diagnosed at increasing rates and services for children with autism are expanding.  However, there is some evidence of disparities in rates of diagnosis and service utilization for Latino children as compared to non-Latino white children.  In-home interviews with families were utilized to investigate barriers to service use for Latino children and their families, cultural interpretations of autism for these families, and maternal vulnerability and resiliency factors.

The second project is a health intervention program for Latina mothers of children with disabilities.  My research shows that Latina mothers caring for children with disabilities are in poor health and have high rates of depression; yet services are typically focused on the needs of the child and not on the needs of parental caregivers.  We developed a health education intervention that is focused on Latina mothers of children with disabilities and is based on a promotora de salud (lay health educators) model.  A unique aspect of our project is that Latina mothers of children with disabilities serve as promotoras and are trained to provide health education to other similar mothers.  We will be adapting this program for African American mothers of children with IDD as well.