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Our Team

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Rebecca A. Jones, PhD

Community & Stakeholder Engagement Director 

Rebecca Jones, PhD, MS is the Director for Community & Stakeholder Engagement at the Institute for Integration of Medicine & Science at UT Health San Antonio. She holds a doctorate in Applied Demography from the School of Public Policy at UTSA. She also holds an MS degree in Health and Kinesiology, with an emphasis in community health and biostatistics and a BS in Kinesiology with an emphasis in physiology from UTSA. She has over 10 years of experience in program evaluation, research design, and statistical analyses. Her areas of focus include health systems research, health disparities, and structural determinants of health.

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Elisabeth Martinez de la Rosa, MS, CHW

Research Operations Manager – Community & Stakeholder Engagement

Elisabeth develops and implements programs that foster and sustain community-academic research partnerships for health research. She has experience coordinating research studies and programs, and has worked closely with diverse partners to develop, implement, and evaluate initiatives addressing critical health issues such as diabetes, environmental health, teen pregnancy, and suicide prevention. She has organized successful IIMS Community Engagement Symposia for over a decade, emphasizing how collaborations can build trust and drive impactful health research. She is the administrator for the Community Engagement Small Projects Grants Program and co-leads the annual Public Health Camp, aimed at expanding public health workforce capacity by engaging high school students. Elisabeth serves on several boards and committees including the UT Health SA Office of Outreach and Health Access Advisory Council, the National Community Engagement Enterprise Committee for CTSAs, the Northwest Vista College CHW Advisory Board, and EISD Families for Community Safety. She is a sociologist by training and a Texas state-certified Community Health Worker.  In addition, Elisabeth is a Translational Science PhD student studying how to  embed user-centered approaches to enhance community-engaged research.  

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Inez Cruz, PhD

Director – IIMS PBRN Resource Center & Residency Research Network of Texas (RRNeT)

Dr. Cruz has served as the Director of the IIMS Practice-Based Research Network Resource Center and the Director of the Residency Research Network of Texas (RRNeT) since 2018. Under her leadership, RRNeT’s Family Medicine faculty and residents have collaboratively developed new multi-site research projects addressing PBRN member priorities such as social determinants of health and quality of life, comfort with uncertainty among trainees, physician burnout, and demonstrating accountability to payers and regulators. Additionally, Dr. Cruz is an Assistant Professor of Research in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at UT Health San Antonio, where she primarily conducts qualitative health services research. She is also the Director of Community Engagement and Partnerships for the UT School of Public Health San Antonio.

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Janna Lesser, PhD, RN, FAAN

Community Engagement Co-Investigator 

Dr. Lesser is a tenured Professor in UT Health San Antonio’s School of Nursing, the Director of the South Texas AHEC Program and Director of the Center for Community-Based Health Promotion with Women and Children. She has conducted community-engaged projects with individuals and communities living with a myriad of health and social inequities for over twenty years, for which she has received both internal and external funding. Dr. Lesser works with a diverse group of target populations including inner-city dwelling adolescent mothers and fathers, disenfranchised youth (including youth in the juvenile justice system), families living in predominantly Hispanic, impoverished communities, and individuals and groups living with chronic and severe mental illness.

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Kathleen Stevens, EdD, RN, ANEF, FAAN

Community Engagement Co-Investigator

Dr. Stevens is the Director of the Improvement Science Research Network (ISRN) which aims to advance the scientific foundation for quality improvement, safety and efficiency through transdisciplinary research in healthcare systems, patient-centeredness, and integration of evidence into practice. Dr. Stevens was the founding director of ACE-Center for Advancing Clinical Excellence 2000-2015, leading interprofessional efforts to advance evidence-based quality improvement and patient safety. Her federally funded activities emphasize healthcare transformation through scholarly work on the national Improvement Science Research Network, AHRQ Health Care Innovations Exchange, Institute of Medicine’s report Preventing Medication Errors, and team performance improvement. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the Academy of Nurse Educators and is the UT System Chancellor’s Health Fellow for healthcare delivery science.

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Melissa Valerio-Shewmaker, PhD, MPH

Community Engagement Co-Investigator

Dr. Valerio-Shewmaker is an Associate Professor at the UTHealth School of Public Health in Brownsville. Dr. Valerio-Shewmaker and her team provide research and technical assistance to the Translational Advisory Boards (TABs) and other community-based organizations to help them respond to prioritized health concerns. Dr. Valerio-Shewmaker’s research interests include using community-based research approaches for chronic disease management and prevention, the design and evaluation of effective health education messages and materials, and survey methods. She is particularly interested in health literacy and cultural competence issues related to health education and communication in minority underserved communities.

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Ariel Gomez, MPH, CHES, CHW

Community Engagement Co-Investigator

Ms. Gomez is the recently appointed lead of the South Central Area Health Education Center (AHEC) but has been with the center since 2014. She has a decade of experience connecting with communities and other community-based organizations to evidence-based health promotion initiatives. She has also served as a mentor and now leads rotating students of all levels. Coming from a rural background, she is dedicated to cultivating the next wave of healthcare professionals by working with students to understand the varying needs of the communities in South Texas and working with academic and community partners to improve health outcomes for vulnerable and underrepresented communities. She received her Master’s in Public Health in Health Promotion and Behavioral Science with a health disparities certificate from the UTHealth School of Public Health San Antonio.

Our Academic Partners

Community Health Advisory Board (CHAB)

Practice-Based Research Network (PBRN) Center

Translational Advisory Boards (TABs)