UNL’s Minority Health Disparities Initiative, funded through the Nebraska Tobacco Settlement Trust Fund, seeks to eliminate race- and ethnicity-based health disparities in Nebraska and beyond. Researchers involved with the initiative have studied health disparities affecting native-born Mexicans, the LGBT community, Native Americans, women and others. The initiative intends to build a community of researchers with active interest in minority health and health disparities, increase participation of minority scholars at all levels in health-related research and encourage emerging health scholars to pursue a research career in minority health disparities.
Rick Bevins
faculty
Professor
Psychology
Director, Rural Drug Addiction Research Center
Psychology
Bio
Rick Bevins is a member of the Minority Health Disparities Initiative leadership team. His research program bridges areas of neuroscience, pharmacology, animal learning and cognition, psychology and immunology. He uses animal models as a tool to elucidate factors involved in the etiology of drug abuse.
Kathryn Holland
faculty
Associate Professor
Psychology
Assistant Professor of Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies
Psychology
Bio
Kathryn Holland is the director of the Sexual Assault and Sexual Health (SASH) Lab, where she and others study a variety of issues related to sexual assault and sexual health—with the goal of helping people, especially women, live safer and healthier lives. An assistant professor within both the Department of Psychology and the Department of Women and Gender Studies, Holland joined the university faculty in 2017. She works within both disciplines to investigate how people’s health and wellbeing are influenced by their social environments, focussing on formal support systems, social norms, and interpersonal processes.
Bio
Dr. Jordan Soliz is a professor who studies communication and intergroup processes primarily in family and personal relationships. Current projects focus on communication in multiethnic-racial families, interfaith families, and grandparent-grandchild relationships with a goal toward understanding communicative dynamics associated with individual well-being and relational-family solidarity. He also investigates processes and outcomes of intergroup contact and intergroup dialogue as well as communication processes that minimize outgroup attitudes (e.g., ageism) and/or buffer effects of discrimination.
Elizabeth Clausing
faculty
Assistant Professor
School of Global Integrative Studies
4024722411
eclausing2@unl.edu
Bio
Elizabeth Clausing is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She is particularly interested in how stress can impact the body through epigenetic inheritance via DNA methylation in mothers and children. She is especially interested in how early childhood experiences (e.g., low socioeconomic status, childhood adversity) can affect health in adulthood. Her work is interdisciplinary, bridging anthropology, public health, and genetics. Clausing received her degrees from the University of California-San Diego and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.