🌟Meet Yesli Perez-Rocha, Research Data Analyst! Her work scoring cognitive assessments and supporting activities from data collection to result #Dissemination helps ensure high-quality, high-impact data, driven by a passion for research that uplifts communities often overlooked in #PublicHealth.

📈 Latinos face the steepest projected rise in #ADRD cases. Our study found midlife Latinas had good knowledge of risk factors and #Prevention strategies. One knowledge gap was identified: the importance of #CVD risk factors 🫀 for dementia risk.
🔗 bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

🔎 Understanding the social & environmental drivers of midlife cognition requires a full picture. That’s why we measure cardiometabolic health: blood pressure, lipids, blood sugar, weight & inflammation 🫀 This comprehensive data is vital for identifying #ADRD risk factors in our important cohort.

💪 Midlife Latina women face systemic barriers to #HealthyAging, but employ powerful resilience strategies: familism, faith, positive mindset & self-care.
🧠 Solutions must address #SDOH and leverage existing cultural #Resilience.
🔗 academic.oup.com/psychsocgero...

How do we measure decades of #PesticideExposure? Our study links California’s historical Pesticide Use Reporting Data to participant residences via #GIS. 🗺️ This approach is crucial for examining the long-term effects of exposure on key health outcomes, including #CVD risk factors and #BrainHealth. 🧠

Meet Nadia Rojas, MPH, UC Berkeley DrPH candidate! Her #MixedMethods research studies the links between sleep, physical activity, and neurocognitive function among Latina women. 🧠 Her goal: promoting #HealthyAging & reducing health disparities in Latinos. She loves hearing participants' stories! 📖

Major milestone! 🎉 We completed over 520 baseline neurocognitive assessments with a 90% follow-up rate. This high retention is key for our #LongitudinalResearch, allowing us to track changes in brain function over time and understand how social & environmental factors affect #BrainHealth.

Do long-banned pesticides affect health today? 🤔 We found higher levels of #DDT and other persistent #Pesticides were linked to obesity and worse cardiometabolic health in midlife Latina women, suggesting early-life exposures may have lasting effects. Read more: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Meet our incredible Field Coordinator, Norma Morga! 🌟For over 25 years, Norma's dedication to the Salinas community has been vital to our research. She's inspired by a desire to make a difference in the world and improve the quality of life for all people. We couldn't do this work without her! 🙏

Celebrating #HealthyAgingMonth with what "successful aging" means to our participants. Focus groups uncovered unique themes: the importance of their children’s wellbeing and of staying active through work in addition to daily activities and exercise. Read more: journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

New grant alert! 🚨We received funding from the @alzassociation.bsky.social to study why women are disproportionately affected by Alzheimer’s disease. 🧠 We’ll explore how reproductive health and life experiences impact women's AD risk, helping to identify targets for intervention. #ALZFunded

Major milestone reached! 🧠 We’ve collected 100+ brain MRIs in Salinas. Thanks to our partnership with a local imaging clinic, we're studying key markers of #BrainHealth to understand how social and environmental factors affect the brain in midlife. #HealthEquity #CommunityPartnerships

What's the most important socioeconomic factor for brain health in midlife? 🧠 We found that education was the strongest predictor of cognitive performance in a group of women with relatively low SES. This suggests investments in #Education can have lasting effects on #BrainHealth for all. 🎓