Vice Dean and Professor of Social Work
Columbia University
School of Work
Ana F. Abraído-Lanza is Vice Dean and Professor of Social Work at Columbia University’s School of Social Work. She earned her B.A. in Psychology from New York University, and her Ph.D. in Psychology from the Graduate School of the City University of New York. She also completed a post-doctoral training fellowship program in Psychiatric Epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
Her research interests include studying the cultural, psychological, social, and structural factors that affect health, psychological well-being, and mortality among Latinos; health disparities between Latinos and non-Latino whites; and the health of immigrant Latinos. Her major publications on the Latino mortality paradox and on acculturation have contributed to national and international debates on the mental and physical health of Latinos specifically, and on general factors that influence immigrant health. Dr. Abraído-Lanza has served on the Editorial Boards of Health Education and Behavior, the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, and Preventing Chronic Disease. She has served as a committee or Board member on numerous scientific, professional and non-profit organizations and groups, including (among others) the Hispanic Serving Health Professions School; the Community Task Force on Preventive Services of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; and several National Institutes of Health review groups.
Prior to joining Columbia’s School of Social Work, Dr. Abraído-Lanza was Vice Dean and Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at New York University’s School of Global Public Health, and Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University. At the Mailman School, she was the director of the Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD), an education project funded by the National Institutes of Health, which aimed to increase the number of under-represented researchers who enter research careers in the field of public health. Dr. Abraído-Lanza’s honors and awards include being selected as a Columbia University Provost Leadership Fellow. She also received a Teaching Excellence Award from the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University, a Dalmas A. Taylor Distinguished Contributions Award from the Minority Fellowship Program of the American Psychological Association, and the Student Assembly Public Health Mentoring Award from the American Public Health Association.
LINKS TO KEY PUBLICATIONS:
- Abraído-Lanza, A.F., Echeverría, S.E., Flórez, K., & Mendoza-Grey, S. (2022). Latina women in academia: Challenges and opportunities. Frontiers in Public Health. 10:876161.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.876161 - Abraído-Lanza, A.F., Echeverría, S.E. & Flórez, K. (2016). Latino immigrants, acculturation, and health: Promising new directions in research. Annual Review of Public Health, 37, 219-236. PMCID: PMC5337110
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-032315-021545 - Abraído-Lanza, A.F., Martins, M.C., Shelton, R.C. & Flórez, K.R. (2015). Breast cancer screening among Dominican Latinas: A closer look at fatalism and other social and cultural factors. Health Education & Behavior, 42(5) 633-641. PMCID: PMC5385102
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25869406/ - Abraído-Lanza, A.F., Armbrister, A.N., Flórez, K.R., & Aguirre, A.N. (2006). Toward a theory-driven model of acculturation in public health research. American Journal of Public Health, 96, 1342-1346. PMCID: PMC1522104
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2005.064980 - Abraído-Lanza, A.F., Chao, M.T., & Flórez, K. (2005). Do healthy behaviors decline with greater acculturation?: Implications for the Latino mortality paradox. Social Science & Medicine, 61, 1243-1255. PMCID: PMC3587355
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15970234/ - Abraído-Lanza, A.F., Dohrenwend, B.P., Ng-Mak, D.S., & Turner, J.B. (1999). The Latino mortality paradox: A test of the “salmon bias” and healthy migrant hypotheses. American Journal of Public Health, 89, 1543-1548. PMCID: PMC1508801
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1508801/
